Jareth vs The Goblin King
by SaxonnyRETURNS
Summary: Because it is possible to love someone and hate them at the same time...Because he could be cruel and yet he reordered time for her...Because there is a little good and evil in all of us. A sequel where light and dark are no longer balanced out.
1. Prologue

If anyone had actually been watching a small patch of sky over northeastern Washington, near the minute town of Maize, they would have seen something _amazing_. Unfortunately the entire population of Maize, including the group of students from WSU, was five hundred and sixty four. The occupants of the town were spread throughout the grand forests that made up the Pacific Northwest, which meant about one person per thirty miles, and therefore no one witnessed the spectacle.

A hole opened up in the fabric of space and time, and a body dropped through.

The only thing that stopped the limp form from crashing to the ground in an explosion of skin and teeth was the fact that it was redwood country. The tall giants, whose branches extended higher than most of their deciduous cousins, cushioned his fall. The body ricocheted and bounced off numerous leafy limbs before breaking through the canopy to crash with a sickening thud into a thicket of ferns.

"JESUS CHRIST!"

Christian had to wait a minute for his heart to restart after the intense shot of adrenaline that coursed through his body when whatever fell into the bushes directly to his right nearly took off his head.

Whoever said being a lab assistant was boring was so fucking WRONG.

The mushrooms he had been gathering now strewn on the ground, forgotten, the first thought that ran through Christian's head was that perhaps it was a meteor. Steam was rising from the dense shrubbery, and it smelled like the earth was slightly scorched.

Crawling carefully over to the perimeter of the ferns, Christian delicately parted the green leaves. And swore for the second time in minutes.

"Holy_ shit_."

Lying in the center of the miniature crater was a young man.

He looked like he had walked through a shower of that glitter crap Christian's little sister liked to put on before dates; his skin positively shimmered with it. His golden blond hair was matted and tangled and lay around his head in spikes, and his clothes were bloody and torn.

As Christian looked on, his eyes round as saucers, the man groaned and stirred. Eyes the color of sage opened and rolled around wildly until they fell upon the startled undergrad. The man licked his lips and started croaking out words that sounded like gibberish. He stopped abruptly and shook his head as if clearing it. When he spoke again, it was in English.

"My name is Jareth…and you have _no_ idea how screwed up this is."

Christian's mind was like an engine that was revving furiously in neutral and had yet to slip into gear. There seemed to be a problem with his transmission; he couldn't get his brain working properly. So he reverted to the universal phrase that was appropriate when something unbelievable happens.

"Hey man, are you okay?"

The man tried to sit up, groaned, and fell back. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

"Sarah," he whispered. "I need to find…Sarah."

Then he passed out.


	2. Chapter One

Bent over a small patch of Basidiomycetes that were reproducing fruitfully, magnifying goggles firmly secured on her face, Sarah nodded in satisfaction. Judging by the growth of the specimens since her last visit to the site, their theories were proving sound.

"So?"

She made a face at Kee, whose eyebrows were raised, waiting for Sarah to answer.

"So what?"

"So?" The Asian girl stood firm, refusing to be put off by Sarah's scowl.

"So... Gary and I broke up."

Kee's accusatory silence made the back of her neck burn. "Okay fine. _He_ broke up with _me_," Sarah eventually admitted, her eyes firmly fastened on the group of spores.

"What happened?"

Sarah leaned back on her haunches, pushing her goggles on her forehead. "He wanted to move in. I told him no. He wasn't happy. Satisfied?"

"Are _you_ satisfied?"

"No, I'm stuck out in the forest with a lab partner who won't do her job."

"Point taken. But I'm saving this subject for later."

"Fiiiiiiiiine," Sarah breathed, turning back to her work as Kee returned to the main tent. She crouched lower, and tucked a strand of raven hair that escaped her ponytail behind her ear. She held her breath so as not to disturb the delicate fungi, and blindly reached for the pencil so she could make notes on her clipboard.

"_SARAH_?"

Sarah nearly toppled over, arms pinwheeling frantically in order to refrain from crushing the control group. Instead of leaning forward on her knees, she managed to alter her line of balance and fell instead on her bottom in the mud. She sat there for a second, feeling the cold wet dirt seep through her shorts and scowled.

She stood up, tried to wipe the mud off her backside and only succeeded in smearing it around more.

"SARAH!"

At the sound of panic in the voice, all her annoyance fled. She turned.

Christian and Danny, two of the undergrads who were granted special permission to accompany the graduate students on their field research, emerged from the forest into the clearing where camp was set up. They were dragging a third person between them. She could see blood.

Panic welled up in her until she could taste it. Who was hurt? How did it happen?

"Kee, get the first aid kit!" she yelled over her shoulder. She started running towards the trio. As she approached, a small wave of relief fell over her; she didn't recognize the injured person. No one on her team had hair that pale golden color. The relief was short lived though; the man was very obviously hurt and unconscious.

"Was it a bear?" were the first words out of her mouth.

Christian and Danny shuffled to a stop and exchanged a bewildered glance, as if they didn't have the right words to describe what happened.

"It wasn't a bear," Christian finally said.

Before she could question them further, the stranger moaned. He wasn't able to stand on his own, but he did shift against the two younger men that supported him and lifted his head. Sarah felt her stomach turn to a lump of ice in her belly.

Unfamiliar eyes glittered out from a VERY familiar face. One eye was nearly swollen shut and had turned black and blue, and the blood from various cuts and gashes had dried to a nasty rust color, but Sarah immediately knew who it was. It looked like someone had shoved the Goblin King through a meat grinder.

"Sarah," he said, relief in his voice obvious, before his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Then he passed out again.

Her world started to blur around the edges; she dug in her nails and fought to keep a grip on reality.

By now a group had gathered in a tight circle around them. Kee stood anxiously by, roll of gauze and first aid kit in hand. Because Sarah was the team leader, and because the stranger knew her name, everyone was looking to her for answers. What the hell was she going to tell them? That the last time she had run into him he had stolen her younger brother and forced her to race against time through a perilous maze? That a fantasy figure from her past had managed to track her down in the middle of the Pacific Northwest? That until thirty seconds ago, he was the last person she ever thought she'd see again?

"Sarah, do you _know_ this guy?" Danny asked.

What could she say? She could lie. She could deny that she knew him. She could throw him into an ambulance and let a hospital take care of him. As much as she wanted to resume with her normal day's activities…she couldn't form the words that would put his fate in the hands of strangers.

"He's my-" she racked her brain, and said the first word that popped into her mouth, "boyfriend."

Ten pairs of eyebrows shot toward the sky. Inwardly she cursed; most of the research team had known her for years. Of _course_ they looked at her like she was insane; they thought she had just broken up with Gary.

"My ex-boyfriend," Sarah corrected hastily, nervously shifting her weight. She unclenched her fists. Ten crescent shaped welts were embedded in her palm in a fierce red color. "From way back…high school."

Confused looks still surrounded her but no one questioned her further.

Yet.

"Jesus Sarah, this guy looks like he went ten rounds with Mike Tyson and lost," Kee breathed in awe. "He looks like he has _some story_ to tell."

"_He sure does_," Sarah muttered under her breath. Kee was the only person who wasn't whispering excitedly, so she was the only person who heard Sarah. Their eyes met for a split second.

"That's nothing," Christian said, his eyes wide, a small part of him excited that he discovered the guy, "he came out of absolutely nowhere. One second I was collecting spores and the next, BAM! He nearly fell on top of me!"

Everyone's head turned in unison to Sarah. She bit her lip.

"He…was a very avid tree climber…when we were together. Years ago," she added lamely.

"How did he-" Philip started.

"You know," Kee interrupted, taking charge of the situation. "while we're gossiping, this man needs a hospital."

"Oh. Right." Christian and Danny had the decency to look ashamed.

"We're almost done here with the specimens…Sarah, if you want to take Mr. X to a doctor, we'd be happy to finish up here. Wouldn't we guys?" She swept the group with her almond-shaped eyes, daring someone to disagree. She was barely over five feet tall and looked delicate and unassuming, but Kee was a powerful authority figure; a force to be reckoned with in the Biology department.

"Can you guys get him to the black Jeep?" Sarah instructed.

The two makeshift orderlies helped their wayward patient, who was stumbling in and out of consciousness; to one of the Jeeps that the lab had on reserve for field research while Sarah ran to her tent to gather her things. She wasn't surprised when Kee followed her silently.

At twenty-two, Sarah knew when she was caught. She grabbed a pair of clean gray corduroy pants and glanced up at her friend.

"Thank you."

Kee shrugged. "You're a horrible liar."

Sarah changed quickly, threw on a clean black T-shirt for good measure and shoved her mud-soaked clothes into the dirty laundry bag. She stuffed that into her enormous duffel alongside the rest of her clothes and toiletries.

"Can you pack up the rest of my stuff for me?"

"Sure. Are you going to take him to a hospital?"

Sarah paused in mid-stuff, turning the idea over in her head.

"No. Not if I don't have to."

Kee nodded, as if that was the answer she expected.

"He's obviously not your ex." Keen eyes saw her friend hesitate briefly. "Or is he?"

"Not in the way you're thinking. I was young. He was…" Sarah drifted off, having no clue how to describe him. "It was years and years ago." She busied herself with pulling her boots back on.

"This guy. Is this _The Guy_?"

Sarah knew what Kee was referring to. _The Guy_ all other guys were compared to. She wanted to say no. She couldn't.

Instead, she shrugged uncomfortably.

"He means trouble, doesn't he?"

Sarah laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "Oh, when he shows up, trouble is never far behind."

"Why come looking for you then?"

"I have no idea. We haven't spoken in years. We parted on…mutual terms." She chuckled softly at her inside joke.

"What happened to him?"

Tossing her bag over her shoulder, Sarah smiled grimly. "That's what I'm going to find out. I owe him that much, I guess." Leaving the tent behind her pathetically bare, Sarah pushed through the flap into the daylight. A small crowd had gathered around her Jeep, and she could just barely see the Goblin King's spiky hair through the window.

"Freeze," Kee said, and turned Sarah around. She stuffed the First Aid Kit into the already overflowing bag. "You'll probably need that."

"Thanks."

"Sarah? Are you decent?" Christian's head was through the tent flap before he finished asking the question. He was covered in dirt and blood, and looked tired and scared. "He's in the Jeep. Do you need someone to come with you?"

"No." She didn't want to involve anyone in this already incredibly weird situation, and she wanted a chance to talk to Jareth without prying ears. "But listen...is there anything else...weird...you saw in the forest?" Visions of chattering goblins playing in the underbrush sprung to mind.

Christian's eyes got as round as saucers. "Oh!" He dug in his pocket and fished something out. He held it out to Sarah; it was a silver medallion dangling precariously from a broken leather band. She took it; it was surprisingly light. On the top the silver was smooth; when she turned it over the bottom side looked like it had been scorched. Deep grooves were carved into the surface.

"I found that lying next to him. I figured it was his."

"Yeah," Sarah whispered, unheard by Christian. It looked kind of like the pendant he wore every time she saw him, but that was so long ago, she couldn't be sure. She thought she remembered there being points on it, though.

"Well...I'll be going then." Christian finally understood the silent message Kee had been trying to relay to him and excused himself.

Kee turned back to her friend. "I want the whole story when this is all over."

Sarah fingered the scorch marks on the pendant. There were raised edges, scrapes in the silver that were rough against her skin. "I don't know if _anyone_ can handle the whole story."

Kee's chocolate colored eyes bore into hers, and the petite Asian girl smiled slowly. At that exact moment, Kee looked like she herself belonged in the Labyrinth; an exotic sprite from the Orient who spent her days playing pranks on hapless wanderers in the maze. Understanding passed between them for the second time since lunch.

"Maybe you _could_ handle it," Sarah said thoughtfully.

"But not today."

"Nope, not today. I've many promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep." She slid the pendant in her pocket.

Kee squeezed her arm. "Be wary."

"Around him? Always."

She hooked the keys to the Jeep out of her Jean Jacket with her free hand and reluctantly approached her past.


	3. Chapter Two

Which way did she want to go?

Yes, _Sarah_, which way?

The closest area that even resembled a city- with a city hospital -was an hour to the east. Home was an hour and a half south. She didn't need to be told that time was of the essence; so far both her previous and current experiences with the man quietly moaning next to her involved her racing against a clock. Hospital: unknown people. More explanations. Home: she had the home field advantage. More contacts. More options.

Sarah chose.

As per usual with the Pacific Northwest, it started to rain only moments after she pulled out onto the main highway from the campsite. The towering redwoods stemmed off most of the steady downpour, but Sarah still had to keep her wipers on high as she headed south, toward home.

The rain wasn't the only reason why she was barely meeting the speed limit. Her eyes kept darting over to the unconscious man who lay curled in a fetal position in the passenger seat. If it weren't for the slow but steady rise and fall of his chest, she would have thought he was dead. There was a nasty gash on his thigh; his tight fitting trousers were slashed open and stained with blood. His cream color tunic looked almost…singed in some places, the skin beneath dark with ashes and bruises. And with the windows rolled up, the smell of smoke and charred fabric was pretty powerful. Only it was mixed with something warmer; there was also an underlying scent of rich spices. Sarah had a feeling that was_ his _scent.

He stirred, turned in the seat to face her, and she got her first good look at the Goblin King since he fell into her lap less than an hour ago. Sarah gasped, her heart speeding up until it was running in the red.

Her attention distracted from the road, the Jeep swerved, skidded in the rain. If there had been an oncoming car she would have been street pizza. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel as she regained control. The second she could, she pulled over to the side of the road, the brakes screeching to a halt, turning in her seat to face him.

He was _different_. And not in the way that she was different. She had _grown up_; sprouted an additional four inches, her hips flared into a woman's curves and her breasts filled out quite nicely by most people's standards and yes, she wore reading glasses sometimes. However, those were the normal ravages of time…people weren't supposed to get _YOUNGER_.

The man who gripped the dashboard in pain looked to be about her age- _at least six or seven years younger than he had been the last time she encountered him_. His skin, aside from the bruises and swelling, was ripe with the glow of youth. Not one wrinkle marred his face, his jaw line was more prominent, and his dark golden eyebrows arched elegantly over smooth eyelids.

She wanted so badly to demand an explanation, her tongue ITCHED with the words…but her parents had raised her well; Sarah Williams had more manners than that.

"Are you okay? Where does it hurt?"

He eventually managed to unclench his jaw, and slowly released his death grip on the dashboard and door handle.

"My leg…" he said weakly. At least the exotically accented voice hadn't changed; it still sounded like a rose brushed over bare skin.

The wound on his leg was starting to seep blood again. It welled in a red pool in the gash, ready to overflow at any moment. He looked at it, then at her helplessly, as if he didn't understand what the blood meant. She reached for her backpack, which held the first aid kit.

She sighed. "You never make anything easy, do you?" She ripped open a package and removed the sterile gauze pad, pressing so firmly against the wound that he hissed.

"Can you manage to keep pressure on this?"

He gulped and nodded, sweating visibly now. Fine strands of golden hair were stuck to his forehead and cheeks.

His hands replaced hers- his skin was clammy -and she scooted back into her own seat.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

The Goblin King? Saying thank you? Her mouth remembered to close five seconds before he looked up, his eyes meeting and holding hers. That damn jaw; it seemed to have lost its hinges. Only this time she recoiled as well, bumping her head on the car door.

"Sarah?"

"Y…your EYES!"

The eyes that met hers were not the eyes of the Goblin King she remembered. They were the cool color of Japanese jade, a rich green not unlike her own. And they were_ identical_.

"Who _ARE_ you?" she whispered hoarsely. It felt like she had been punched in the stomach; she had to physically struggle for breath.

Confusion echoed in those alien eyes.

"I know who you're _supposed_ to be…but you're _NOT HIM_."

The confusion was echoed in his tone. "Who _else_ would I be?"

His answer was par on course from what she remembered of the Labyrinth. Everyone there had liked to give answers that had a hidden meaning.

_Sometimes it seems like we're not getting anywhere, when indeed we are_

"Cut the crap. Before I move this car another inch I want to know what's going on," she demanded.

He shrugged helplessly, panic on his face at the loss of control. _"_I don't _know_ what's going on"

"Bullshit!" she spat practically over his last sentence. He looked shocked at the curse coming from her mouth. Sarah closed her eyes and forced herself to calm down.

"Who did this to you? Do you know that?"

Reluctantly, he nodded his head. "I think..._I did_."

The silence in the car grew thick with her anger. "I'm not in the mood for your games," she warned.

"I assure you, this is not a game."

"You did this to yourself?"

He pressed his hand to his forehead with the desire to pluck the information from his very mind as much as to alleviate overwhelming dizziness. "I...I don't remember exactly."

"LOOK!" she yelled, losing all her patience. "Do NOT for one SECOND think you can FUCK with me. I did _not_ call on you, I did _not _ask for this in my life. I don't _do_ riddles or magic quests anymore. If you want my help, then you WILL be straight with me. If not, I can let you out right here and point you in the direction of the nearest sheriff's office. I'm sure they'd LOVE to hear your story."

Long, tense moments passed while the rain pattered on the roof in a steady downpour. The defroster in the car was for decoration only-it hadn't worked in years -and the windows started to steam up. Soon they were alone in a privately foggy world.

"The last thing I remember," he started slowly, "is waking up from a dream in the middle of the night. The dream was...something wasn't right."

"What did you dream?"

His brow furrowed in concentration, and after a minute he shook his head. "I don't _remember_. But I do know when I woke up, it felt as though my head was splitting in two. The pain passed before I could summon help. I waited for it to return but it didn't." His memory was becoming slightly clearer. "I saw that I had forgotten to close the draperies, and the moon was so bright that I couldn't fall back to sleep, so I got up to close them. Only on the way back to bed, I was..." he trailed off, staring at the storm outside the window, lost in memory.

He sounded so distraught, so lost, that Sarah didn't know what to think. If he was playing mind games with her, he should move to Hollywood and win an Academy Award for the performance he was delivering. She put her hand on his arm for support.

"You were what?" she encouraged gently.

"I was attacked," he said finally. "In the dark. I was ambushed from behind. At first I thought it was a wild animal; it was growling and scratching at me with claws…it pinned me down on the floor, hit me over and over again until I was barely conscious…I must have called out for help because my guards ran in at that moment and…"

Again he trailed off, this time shuddering as he obviously relived the moment in his mind. The sound of rain filled her ears until he looked up at her, his eyebrows low over his new eyes and his jaw tight.

"In the light that spilled in from the corridor, I saw what was on top of me. It looked like…ME."

Sarah's brain was starting to hurt. "How…?"

He shook his head, several strands of his golden hair falling into his eyes. "I don't know how to explain it. It was my face I was looking at…my hair, my arms, my body…only it wasn't. But his eyes…they were bright yellow…the eyes of a snake. Somehow I managed to get away...I managed to escape to the one place I thought I would be safe...I had to find _you_..."

His words, so openly ominous, caused a shiver to lick up her spine. At that moment, he hissed harshly and his teeth clenched as a spasm ripped through his leg. He started to ease up his pressure on the wound, but Sarah laid her hand over his.

"Don't. You need to keep a firm pressure to stop the bleeding." Unconsciously, she left her hand on top of his for comfort. The bandage wasn't doing much to stop the flow of blood, it was only slowing it down. Whatever…whoever attacked him had done major damage.

"I…I feel dizzy." His eyes were rolling back into his head.

"Hey...hey!" she snapped her fingers in front of his face, but he was slumping down in his seat. She did the only thing she could think of to do.

She slapped him, as hard as she could, across the cheek.

It did the trick, his eyes were now open and wide and staring at her in disbelief.

"I'm sorry," she said immediately, "but you need to stay awake as long as you can. You're losing a lot of blood and if you pass out you might-" she didn't need to finish the sentence; the grave look on her face told the whole story.

She scooted all the way back into the driver's seat and threw the car into gear, rolling down the windows to let both air and rain in before pulling out onto the highway again. She shot him a nervous glance.

"Are you with me?"

He nodded tightly, his mouth screwed down in pain. He leaned heavily against the door but kept his eyes open.

"Shit. Shit shit shit!" She hit the steering wheel with each curse, the gas pedal grazing the floor as she sped through the monsoon. She was getting drenched, she could only see through a small strip of defrosted glass at the bottom of the windshield, and she was so tense she was afraid she'd pop like a balloon. She hadn't wanted to take him to a hospital; it would have aroused too many questions. But now it looked like she had no choice. If he didn't get medical attention, he would die.

And she would have to explain about the tow-headed corpse in her trunk.

"No way," she muttered. "No _way_ is that gonna happen."

"Sarah?"

She glanced at him again. Rain from the open passenger window plastered his hair against his forehead and turned his shirt transparent. He looked hurt, scared, and utterly, utterly vulnerable.

The windows cleared of all condensation and she rolled them up. "Just stay with me," she repeated over and over again, eyes glued to the road.

* * *

They drove on without speaking; the only sounds in the car were the steady drum of rain against the roof and his labored breathing. Finally, the question that had been nagging him broke away from his lips.

"You don't trust me."

Showing up in her life again with no warning looking different than she remembered with a flimsy story about an evil twin? "No, I don't," she said matter-of-factly.

"So why are you helping me?"

Sarah kept her eyes on the road. Why WAS she helping him? His role in her past did not give him a lien over her and vice versa. She did not owe him anything. Regardless of her initial gut feeling, she was pretty sure she COULD drop him off at a hospital and manage to get a full night's sleep.

_Oh, who was she kidding?_

"Because you look like you need all the help you can get. And I can't just walk away from someone in need." She shot him a sharp glance. "No matter who…or what…they are."


	4. Chapter Three

Memories from long ago crept up on her like predators in the dark. She _hadn't_ been lying to him earlier; she really _didn't_ do magical quests anymore. Daydreaming, playacting, wishing on a star, they had long ago been put away on a high shelf to gather dust while she found new toys to play with; microscopes and petri dishes and data charts. And reliable toys these were; they carried her through high school, through college, and into a Masters program at Washington University. Their reliability and their lifetime warranty of logic she discovered to be a cool relief from her heated hormone years.

God, fifteen was such a long way off that it, in and of itself, seemed like a fairy tale. She hadn't meant to be such a...such a bratty teenager, but newly-awakened hormones and a broken home dictated her almost helpless disregard for everyone around her. Frozen in her mind was the image of a girl with sable hair and dreams in her eyes holding a screaming baby high in the air, and the overwhelming blood tie to a half brother that led her into a magical maze.

Had that _really_ been her? Which was the _real_ Sarah: a girl dressed up with a tinfoil crown that was loved more dearly than the crown jewels of England, or the young woman bent over a microscope with glasses perched on her nose and a pencil scribbling numbers on a chart? Was it really her _now_, driving maniacally down the freeway with an injured Goblin King moaning quietly in the passenger seat? _Where had her reality gone_?

Sarah almost cried when she saw the familiar signs on the freeway that pointed toward home, and toward the university's hospital.

"We're almost there," she said, relief evident in her voice.

Jareth glanced out the window. "Where are we going?"

"I'm taking you to see a friend of mine. He's going to look at your injuries." She had already called Roger from the gas station and he had agreed to meet her in his lab. It was quite a brilliant idea, really: as long as Roger could keep his mouth shut, it meant she wouldn't have to take the Goblin King to the hospital.

Hopefully.

"How do you feel?"

He tried to sit up and looked like he regretted it "I have been better."

She pulled off the highway smoothly, using the exit ramp that was easiest access to the campus.

"Who is this friend we are going to see?"

Sarah pulled up alongside a giant bay door and honked twice before turning the car off.

"He's a doctor…," she said tightly. _Of sorts_.

A side door to the loading bay opened and a tall man in a lab coat and thick glasses pushed a wheelchair down the ramp and toward the car. Sarah jumped out of the Jeep to meet him halfway up the ramp. She spoke in a low voice.

"Thank you for doing this."

Roger cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses nervously. "I could get into a lot of trouble."

"I know. And I appreciate what you're doing. A LOT," she emphasized, following him down the ramp.

He blushed under her smile, pushing the wheelchair up to the Jeep. When Sarah opened the passenger side door, the Goblin King all but tumbled out. His eyelids were fluttering rapidly and his skin looked as pale as when she confronted him at the end of the Labyrinth.

Roger gaped for a moment at the amount of blood that stained the torn clothes. "I'm not sure I should-"

"Please, Roger? Please?" she pleaded, a note of desperation creeping into her voice. She sighed in relief when Roger nodded shortly. They helped Jareth awkwardly into the wheelchair. Once he was most of the way in, Roger pushed the patient up the gangway with another nervous glance over his shoulder.

She dug in her pockets to make sure she had her keys, and instead fished out the scarred pendant. Rubbing absently against the abrasive side of the metal- it really was kind of comforting -she ran back to the car and leaned across the passenger seat to grab the keys. In the process, she bumped her head against the rearview mirror, pushing it out of alignment. She automatically reached to adjust it, her eyes flicking instinctively across the silver surface.

The Goblin King, drooling and grinning with pointed fangs, was reflected in the mirror. Sitting in the back seat and dressed all in black, he lunged at her with his mouth biting, and his eyes like a cat's; the cornea an insane golden color.

Sarah screamed shrilly, banging her head against the car door hard enough to see stars as she shoved herself out of the car. She fell on her back, the keys and pendant dropping from her nerveless fingers and skidding across the pavement. Her arms thrown protectively over her face, she waited to be attacked and cursed herself for trusting the King of the Goblins.

The echoes of her scream faded into silence. Nothing came out of the Jeep.

Trembling, she rose to her feet, ready to bolt like a scared rabbit at the slightest hint of trouble.

The car was empty.

"What the _fuck_."

Not taking her eyes from the Jeep, she reached down with a shaking hand to pick up the keys and necklace. Even though the car was empty, she had seen the Goblin King in the rearview mirror, _seen him_ there as clear as a crystal. She would have thought it wasn't possible, except EVERYTHING was possible when it came to the Goblin King.

Suddenly, her eyes widened in shock. She had left him all alone with-

"Roger." She sprinted up the ramp, praying she wasn't too late.

* * *

Sarah flew through the corridors that were eerily empty. She didn't know what he was up to or what she could possibly do if the Goblin King decided he was going to hurt her or Roger, but she would try her hardest to not go down without a fight.

Her sneakers squealed against medical-issue tile as she rounded a corner at top speed and skidded to a halt.

Whatever she thought she was going to run in on, she didn't expect _this._ Her mouth dropped open in embarrassed surprise.

Roger had managed to get the unconscious patient onto the stainless steel operating table and was in the process of removing the Goblin King's damaged clothes. The singed and shredded shirt had been cut off and cast aside into the trash. He jerked in surprise as she barged in.

"I need to you grab me a clean blanket," he directed, turning back to the injured man.

"A what?" She couldn't tear her eyes from the Goblin King, so pale and unassuming…and so mostly naked.

Roger nodded, his mouth set into a nervous but professional line. "This lab isn't prepared for your…friend. I don't have any surgical gowns. I need a blanket or a towel to cover him." He proceeded to cut off the bloody leggings.

It took her brain a moment to register what was happening. Whatever she has seen in the car; illusion, hallucination, or just plain shot nerves, it could _NOT_ have been the golden haired man who lay limp on the oversized table. The man before her eyes couldn't sit _up_ much less attack her. His skin was as pale as porcelain and his chest and arms were decorated with dark bruises and scratches. Dark purple half-circles stood out in stark relief below fluttering eyelids.

Her heart was having an argument with her brain about which reality she should believe. The Goblin King she saw in the mirror sounded an awful lot like what _her _Goblin King had described: wild and feral, with yellow eyes. Maybe he had given her a hypnotic suggestion, maybe he _had_ been attacked and he only _thought_ he had seen someone that looked like him…

Maybe maybe maybe. Her brain was starting to hurt.

"Sarah?" Roger paused in mid-snip, concern in his eyes.

She took a deep breath.

"Blanket. Right."

She pivoted on her heel and turned into the hallway to rummage through adjoining rooms for a decent cover-up, shoving the car keys and pendant into her back pocket. As she walked into a smaller scale version of the lab Roger was about to do impromptu surgery in, Dante jumped up to greet her, smiling and waving his hands in the air.

"What're you doing in here?" She walked over to him, lifting the latch of his cage and laughing as the Macaque monkey scurried up her arm to perch daintily on her shoulder. His long tail curled around her neck and he chattered at her, happy to be stretching his legs.

"Don't let Dante out of his cage now," Roger warned from the other room. "He's been a bad boy. We've been working on sharing with the family of iguanas and he's not being very receptive to the idea."

She twisted her head to look the smiling primate in the eye. "You didn't share with your friends?"

Dante ducked in shame, screeching quietly. Sarah patted his head.

"Too late. Sorry," she called to Roger.

She heard Roger chuckling in the other room, and knew he wasn't really mad. She and Dante were old friends; he had been with the university going on two years. A local animal rights group had saved him from an abusive home.

Leaving Dante perched happily on her shoulder and playing with her hair, Sarah searched through drawers until she found clean blankets.

"Got it," she called triumphantly, brandishing the rough woolen blanket like a trophy as she ran back into the lab. In the doorway, though, she stopped so suddenly that she almost tripped over her own feet. Her face exploded with heat at the sight of a very naked Goblin King lying prone on the table, Roger poised over him with a very wicked looking hypodermic needle.

Her cheeks flushed bright pink despite the fact that Roger had draped a hand towel over his most sensitive parts. Thank goodness, or else the question that she giggled about during her formative years might have been answered for good.

_Circumsized or uncircumsized? _

"Sarah?" Roger was in his doctor mode, he looked like he was impatient with her hesitation. She forced her embarrassment into a little ball and threw it in the corner of her mind.

"Found a blanket. Its clean. I hope it will be okay." She handed the wool blanket to Roger and kept her eyes riveted on a full size poster of the Periodic Table as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world as Roger replaced the hand towel with the more adequate covering.

Roger turned back to her and noted her flushed cheeks and downcast gaze.

"Why didn't you take him to a hospital?" he asked quietly.

"…I thought you promised you weren't going to ask any questions." Dante tugged on a strand of her hair, but she barely felt it.

"Do you want my help or not?"

Sarah sighed. Turnabout was fair play. Hadn't she just threatened the Goblin King in the same manner? It seemed like fate had a sense of humor.

"He…he wouldn't come to me unless he was in trouble." At least that was mostly true. "I wasn't sure if a hospital was the safest place right now."

Roger nodded as he localized the injured thigh with an injection. Sarah studiously turned away; she hated shots.

"Okay fraidy cat, you can look again." She leaned against the doorway, absently scratching Dante's head, which was tucked into the crook of her neck. A few moments passed as Roger assembled the necessary tools he scrounged from the medical school.

"So...I heard you broke up with Gary," he said too carefully to be off-hand.

"Roger..." Now was _definitely_ not the time, but she didn't want to be rude.

"By your tone of voice," Roger quipped lightly but with an underlying current of disappointment, "asking you out for a pizza is not a good idea."

"Roger...between Gary and him..." she gestured at Jareth, "...my hands are a little full."

"...is this guy the reason you and I never got together then?" The question came from so far out in left field that her eyebrows shot up and her mouth dropped open for a moment.

She had never been interested in Roger as more than a friend. In the back of her mind, she was aware that he had a serious case of puppy love for her, but she just didn't see anything happening between them. She willed her mouth into a small, ambiguous smile. It was a diplomatic turn of the mouth that the recipient could take any way he or she chose, and it had gotten Sarah out of more than one uncomfortable situation.

"I'm not looking for a boyfriend, Roger. Like I said, please don't take it personally. You're one of my best friends."

He cleaned the blood from Jareth's thigh with a gauze pad stained yellow with iodine. "And him?"

She cast her eyes down on the unconscious man. She lied through numb lips.

"He _was_ my boyfriend a long time ago." _Thats right, Sarah, keep your story consistent_. "But we're just friends now."

Roger turned to the patient, mumbling something so quietly that she couldn't hear him over the pounding of her own heart.

"What?"

He turned back to her.

"I said: 'you were crying pretty hard on the phone over someone who was _just _a_ friend_.'

The numbness in her lips spread through her veins like wildfire.

"I wasn't crying."

Roger snorted, glancing over his shoulder. "Go check a mirror, Sarah. Then tell me you weren't crying." He paused. "What's his name, anyway?"

The Goblin King's name. Indeed.

"It's Jareth." She waited for something to happen, as if uttering his name was a precursor to lightning striking her dead. Of course, nothing happened, and Roger finished cleaning the wounds, began to assess the damage.

"You can take Dante into the lobby but don't leave the building with him. You can wait out there if you don't want to watch this. Jareth and I will be okay."

"Will he really?" Said a tad too anxiously for her supposedly ambiguous position on how she felt about the Goblin King.

"Yup." He picked up a needle and a long piece of clear thread. Sarah's stomach twisted at the sight of it. Even though for the time being, the wounded ruler was her responsibility, she trusted Roger to take good care of him. She also trusted herself enough to know when she was going to throw up if she saw any more of the mini operation. She left.

* * *

Taking Roger's advice, Sarah decided to freshen up a bit in the Ladies Room. Although she didn't feel entirely comfortable entering a room that had many empty mirrors waiting to be filled with projections of her fears, the pressure in her bladder outweighed the other anxiety. Dante was a very well behaved Macaque, so he waited patiently, perched on a sink while she took care of her business with a sigh of genuine relief. His presence was a definite comfort.

She paused in the stall. What if the mirrors didn't show her reflection? As she hesitantly pushed the door open, she half expected her image to be replaced by whatever she had seen earlier. Her eyes darted back and forth and her muscles tensed in anticipation.

Only Dante, fastidiously washing his paws, could be seen. He looked up and smiled at her as she approached, scampering up her arm to her shoulder as she faced the mirror head on, getting the first good look at herself all day.

"Oh my lord," she said softly, stunned by the trail of tears that had dried down her cheeks, the very light smudges of mascara under her eyes that were amplified by red-rimmed lids. Her lower lip was pink and a little swollen from where she had been biting it in anxiety for the last fifty miles, and she hesitantly reached up a hand to inspect the bruised lip.

The sight of blood on her hands and sleeves caused her stomach to plummet. How on earth?

Then she remembered. It must have happened while she was attending to Jareth's leg. But there was just so damn MUCH of it…

Dante hopped off her back as she turned the water on and began to obsessively scrub her hands like Lady MacB in the Scottish play. It took a long time until they were clean enough to satisfy her.

Sarah turned the water to cold and cupped her now raw hands, wincing at the stinging iciness on her skin. She splashed the water on her flushed face. The exhaustion that was starting to set in was immediately chased away, and she felt better. She grabbed a rough paper towel and blotted her face dry, taking a deep breath.

"You can do this," she assured herself.

She lowered the damp sheet of recycled paper and yelped in surprise.

"Shhhhhh!" Hoggle warned. Actually multiple Hoggles warned; he was reflected in every single mirror all the way down the bathroom wall. Like Jareth, she hadn't seen Hoggle in many years, but at least the aged dwarf looked like she remembered. Rough, wizened, and scared out of his wits.

"We have to keep quiet. We don't want to get caught!" He looked nervously over one shoulder.

"Hoggle," Sarah whispered, trying very hard to keep a hold of the reality she _thought_ she had been a part of, the one where battered Goblin Kings did not fall from the sky and where the only thing she saw when she stood in front of a mirror was herself, "what is going _ON_?"

"SHHhhhh!" He said again, his cheeks flushed with fear. "We don't have a lot of time. Is he with you?"

"You mean the Goblin King? Yeah, he's with me. But what the hell is he DOING here?" she said, her voice rising.

"_Keep your voice down_!" Hoggle whispered fiercely, his snowy eyebrows bunching together over his peach of a nose. "I don't want the other one to hear."

"_What_ other one?"

"I must be going crazy," he sighed heavily.

_That makes two of us_, Sarah thought. Dante placed one small paw on the mirror, confused, but Hoggle didn't notice.

"I would think it were impossible, only I saw them with me own two eyes."

"Them?" Sarah coaxed. It was obviously her day to act as the prompter to fairy tale creatures.

"The Goblin Kings. Two of 'em, I saw. Fightin' with each other, and then suddenly, there was only one of them. The dark one. The mean one. If he catches me talking to you…" he trailed off, shuddering.

It felt like a giant fist was slamming into her midsection. "Hoggle, you mean to tell me that _I have one Goblin King and you have another one_?"

The dwarf nodded reluctantly. "Only there's something…wrong…the King he…he doesn't look right. He looks…sunken in…rotten."

His words cause a light bulb to turn on in her head. She leaned closer to the mirror, too focused on her thoughts to realize how foolish she might have looked conspiring with a mirror on a wall.

"Did he have eyes like a cat's? Or a snake?"

The surprise in his eyes was her answer. "You've seen him?"

She nodded hesitantly. "I wasn't sure _what_ I saw."

"Everyone in the Castle is scared."

"Why?"

Hoggle's bright blue eyes were shining with tears. "He's...he's _horrible_."

_No I ain't, I'm Hoggle,_ she thought absurdly. "How did this happen?"

"We don't know."

"Well, _WHY_ did this happen?"

"We don't know that either."

Sarah's grip on the sink tightened and she wanted to yell. Her life was being turned upside down and she was not getting any answers. She felt like a pawn in a giant Underground game of chess, and she was NOT happy.

"So what do I do now?" she ground out.

"_HooooooooooooooooooGGGGGgggggllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeee."_

A horrible, inhuman howl rose from the depths of the Goblin Castle. Whatever made that sound was not even remotely sane. Sarah clapped her hands over her ears and bit her already abused lip to prevent herself from screaming. Dante, however, went right ahead and started screeching loudly while jumping up and down in fright.

Hoggle gestured frantically. _"He's coming! _Hegrabbed the bottom of his side of the mirror, which was an old-fashioned swing mirror. As the edge rose, the Underground disappeared with it, replaced by her bewildered reflection.

"Hoggle, wait!" she cried softly. He paused, and the mirror depicted half of the Underground, and half of the restroom.

"What am I supposed to do with him?" There were a hundred things she wanted to ask, but those were the most burning questions.

"Take care of him. I'll contact you when…when it's safe." The dwarf paused once more, the fear so evident on his face it hurt her heart. "I've missed you, Sarah."

"Hoggle," she whispered brokenly. "I'm sorry…"

He nodded. Heavy footsteps pounded in the mirror, echoed in Sarah's bones. Before she could say anything else, he shoved the portal shut, cutting off the warm red tones of the Underground and leaving only her shocked reflection, her pale skin chalk white and the circles under her eyes horribly purple in the fluorescent light.


	5. Chapter Four

Sarah sat for a long time in an uncomfortable chair in the darkened lobby. She held Dante tight against her chest as much for her solace as for his; when she dashed out of the bathroom, unable to stand another second in front of the mirrors, Dante had been shaking like a wet dog. Even now, he shivered every few minutes as if hearing the horrible voice over and over again.

Normally Sarah was hesitant about letting the room she was in remain dark, but tonight the shadows felt like a safe haven. There weren't any monsters in the shadows. Apparently they had moved out, and taken up residence in mirrors.

For the time being, Sarah allowed her thoughts to shut completely down, and focused her mind solely on the rhythmic breathing of the body in her arms, of her slow and muted heartbeat as its pace returned to normal, and of the pattering of the storm against the windows. The darkened silence was so much of a comfort that she hadn't realized she had fallen asleep until Roger was gently shaking her awake.

"Hey you," he whispered, sitting next to her in the dark. He took Dante from her, and cradled the dozing Macaque comfortably in the crook of his arm.

"How is he?" she yawned, stretching her long legs in front of her.

Roger sighed. "He's not _well_, but he'll live. The cuts and scrapes weren't as deep as I originally thought. But that leg…you're just lucky you got to me in time. If he lost any more blood, I would have been the first vet student at this college to perform an amputation on a human."

_Not quite _human _at that_, she thought. "You were wonderful in there," she said honestly. "I don't know what I would have done without you."

They sat in silence for awhile, Roger basking in the glow of her compliment, and Sarah's mind turning towards the Underground. What had she gotten herself into?

"I gave him fifty stitches in his thigh. He's going to need to take it easy for awhile."

Sarah nodded. "Is he awake?"

"Not when I left."

She stood. "I should go see him."

"What you both should actually do is get some sleep. You look exhausted."

"You're such a sweet talker," she said wryly, running her fingers wearily through her hair.

"Just the facts, ma'am."

"Well…what do I do now?" _Other than start bawling like a baby,_ she thought.

"He can't stay here. The department head would give me holy hell if he walked in to THAT on the specimen table. I'm not even supposed to be performing surgery on animals without a supervisor, much less humans." The vet student patted Dante's head absentmindedly.

Three lines appeared above her nose and Sarah closed her eyes. Way deep down inside, she had never gotten over her territorial issues; truth be told, she resented having her private space invaded. It's why she moved out at an early age, and why she never had a roommate. And now she had to share.

Anger welled up in her for a moment before reason caused it to subside. There was nowhere else to take him, and there was no point in being angry at something that was out of her control. Frustrated, yes, but angry? It would be futile.

"Can you help me get him back to my place?"

"Sure."

And that was how an hour later, she found herself standing at the door to her loft apartment that was her own precious sanctuary from the outside world, with Roger behind her supporting most of the weight of her new houseguest.

She slid the key into the lock and, as usual, shoved hard on the door to get it to open. The older buildings were not without their faults.

She flipped the light switch and the mini crystal chandelier, which was the highlight of the loft and hung down from the center of the high ceiling, threw diaphanous light into the dark corners.

"Jareth," _damn she would never get used to calling him by his name_, "can sleep in my bed. I'll take the couch."

Her flat was a charming combination of a downtown loft with the added feature of rooms that had been added in during the last renovation against the wall opposite the floor to ceiling windows. A bedroom that was closed off from the main room by French doors- _how Bohemian, she had thought when she first saw them _-a luxurious bathroom and a small study were her private chambers. Well, technically, _none_ of it was hers; she was merely subletting from an Anthropology professor while he and his wife went on sabbatical in Egypt. They toddled off to Africa knowing that reliable Sarah was housesitting, and Sarah's living standards climbed up a few rungs on the social ladder. Everyone benefitted.

It was an absolutely perfect set-up that was now facing change.

Roger started for the bedroom.

"Wait!" she cried, scooping up a chenille throw from the loveseat and swept by the surprised vet. The mirror. She had forgotten about the mirror in her bedroom, and right now her instincts were screaming that perhaps having an open mirror facing Jareth wasn't the best idea.

She gently pushed by him with a nervous smile, quickly shutting the French doors behind her and flipping on the bedroom lights.

"Sarah?"

"Just one second!" she called gaily, feeling like a total chump. Before she could begin to worry about what might be lying in wait in her vintage four-foot wide two foot tall mirror, she threw the blanket over it and tucked in the deliberately frayed edges until absolutely no glass was showing. She finished just as Roger poked his head through the door.

"Are you okay?" He looked past her shoulder to the blanket on the mirror.

"He's...Buddhist," she explained before he could ask. "Its...bad karma to have your reflection shine on you when you sleep."

Roger nodded as if he understood, but his averted gaze told a different story. He knew that she was lying to him and he was hurt. He was also way too polite to ever point it out, and Sarah's jaw clenched. _How many more lies would she have to tell?_

Roger eased the wounded man onto the bed and went so far as to prop up the injured leg with two pillows. Jareth didn't even notice.

Sarah walked Roger to the door. He looked just as tired as she felt, and she knew how hard he had worked. Roger was a vet student who walked the straight and narrow, and tonight she had asked him not only to break into his department but also to perform illegal surgery on someone he didn't know with _almost _no questions asked.

She rose up on her tiptoes and gave him an impulsive peck on the cheek. His hand flew up to his face, which immediately turned red.

"What did you do that for?"

"I don't know what I would have done without you."

He seemed surprised, but Roger nodded. He also looked inordinately pleased with himself.

"You two need to get some sleep. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Ohhhhhh," a yawn threatened to split her face, "kaaay."

"See you tomorrow." Roger shut the door, pulling it with extra force until the latch slipped into place.

She was alone in her apartment with a Goblin King.

And exhaustion hit her so hard that Sarah swayed on her feet for a second. Jareth was bedded down in her room, which left her the small cot she kept in the upstairs closet or the slightly lumpy pull out couch.

She trudged to the couch and sat down wearily, bending to untie her boots. Even that action seemed ten times harder than normal; by the time she slipped them off she was so tired she was almost cross-eyed. Sarah started to lie back, but froze when she glanced down. Her denim jacket was splattered with dried blood. So were her corduroy pants. As tired as she was, there was no way she could fall asleep looking like the victim from a horror movie.

She padded to her bedroom in stocking feet and paused in the doorway.

Moonlight spilled from the window into the room, illuminating the sleeping King to perfection. His injured leg was still propped up, but the blanket Roger had used to cover him had pooled around his waist, leaving his chest bare. One arm was flung above his head, the other rested comfortably on his lower belly. The bruises on his chest and arms were dark shadows. The moonlight caused his golden spiky hair to glow like the stars in the night sky, and for the first time since this afternoon, his breathing was deep and easy.

The sight of him made her heart clench in pain. He was still the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on.

"For Christ's sake," Sarah muttered, feeling nominally ticked at herself for having such explicit thoughts towards someone who, deep down she didn't all trust that much.

She moved silently into the room, moving up to the vintage oak dresser that had come furnished with the apartment. She slid a drawer open as quiet as possible, plucking out the first t-shirt her hand fell on and her all-purpose yoga shorts. She started to head for the bathroom, and then remembered the mirror above the sink. The very large mirror.

Sarah tried to tell herself that she was being silly, but visions of yellow-eyed monsters kept running through her head, and she knew she couldn't handle that room alone in the middle of the night. She could dress out in the main room, except the floor to ceiling windows along the one wall didn't allow for much privacy, and closing the curtains involved a 12 foot iron pole and was a BITCH to do. She glanced at Jareth and sighed.

_Oh who cares anyway? He's sleeping._

She turned around so she wasn't facing him and unbuttoned her jacket. Very quickly, she slid out of the jacket and exchanged a clean shirt for the dirty one. Using a trick she learned in high school, she unhooked her bra and slithered out of it without taking the top off. Sarah unbuttoned her pants and let them fall to the floor. With a quick glance in his direction to make sure he was still asleep, she hooked her thumbs inside her panties and started to shove them down.

"Sarah?"

She screamed softly, whirling around with a hand clutched to her heart. Jareth was propped up on his elbows, his green eyes glowing unnervingly in the moonlight.

"Where am I?" His words were slurred. Roger's drugs were still swimming in his system: his question came out more like '_wherrrrrmI?'_

She felt like a deer in headlights, trapped under Jareth's slightly drugged gaze while standing in nothing but a soft grey t-shirt and panties that were riding awfully low on her hips. For a moment she froze, unsure of whether to play it cool and pretend like it wasn't a big deal or dive for the Yoga shorts.

She combined the two.

"Can you close your eyes for a second?" she asked, furiously embarrassed but trying to sound calm, "I'm kind of changing." She plucked her shorts off the floor and tried to look nonchalant.

Jareth immediately turned his face to the wall, honoring her request. Quick as lightning, Sarah changed into the terrycloth shorts and shoved her bunched up panties into the dirty laundry bin. She felt like her entire body was blushing. She picked up her cords and jacket and threw them on top of everything else in the bin.

"Is this your bedroom?" he asked, clearer. He slumped back down on the matress.

"Yes." Sarah padded out into the kitchen and drew him a glass of water.

"Surely you have the right to sleep in your own bed," he said, but they were empty words; he couldn't have moved if he tried. When she walked back in the bedroom, he had managed to prop himself up on his elbows again, his flat stomach so smoothly muscled that her fingers itched to touch the skin there. Instead she set the glass of water on the bedside, along with a Valium she kept on reserve for her migraines.

"What is this?"

"For when you wake up. I imagine your leg will be hurting."

He looked like he wasn't following her, but considering what he had been through she wasn't surprised.

"Don't worry about the bed. You need it more than I do. Tomorrow I'll delegate you to the couch."

"And tonight?"

She shrugged and made her way to the double doors. "I can sleep on the couch tonight." She started to pull the glass-paned doors shut behind her.

"Please don't."

The word, spoken warmly in the dark, caused shivers to lick up her spine. She froze. Don't _what? _Don't sleep on the couch? Did he _actually_ think she would-

"Leave the doors open. I am not used to...such an enclosed space."

"Oh." Feeling slightly foolish, her hand dropped away from the crystal doorknob. "Well…I imagine we have a long day ahead of us, so I'll say goodnight."

"Sarah?" he asked again, barely visible now that clouds obstructed the light of the moon.

"Y-yes?" So she had clammy palms, so what? It was hard to keep her thoughts walking along the sidewalk instead of in the gutter when she was so tired, so unprepared and defenseless for what had happened today.

"Thank you. I will not forget such generosity."

Her stomach twisted in tight knots, she felt it best to retreat without another word. Sarah thought sleep would be long in coming, but the second her head hit the pillows she was out like a light.


	6. Chapter Five

A crow circled the Labyrinth. If anyone had been around to see it, they would have thought it was the ugliest, meanest looking crow they ever laid eyes on. It's night black feathers were ratted and matted, the too-long wings tattered and battered. Discolored, blotchy legs ended in very sharp looking talons, and if someone had managed to get close enough to the bird, they would have seen flecks of blood drying on the razor claws (_although if someone had been _that_ close, they wouldn't have kept their sight for very long_).

The crow dipped lower. Keen yellow eyes scanned for signs of the_ Other._

Human thought-_ barely _human - rattled around inside the crow. There was a low rage that thrummed underneath all other emotions, rage atthe_ Other_. The_ Other_ was cunning, the _Other_ had tricked him by taking on the most familiar of faces: the one he saw in the mirror every day. The _Other_ was the agent of some force sent to depose him. Had it worked? Something was different; _he_ was different. _Had been_ different since the discovery of the _Other_.

The _Other_ had infiltrated his castle, his territory, therefore the immediate instinct had been to destroy the intruder.

_The imposter. _

The _Other. _

Destroy him before he himself was destroyed, for anyone who could get that close, anyone who would DARE to get that close, could only mean to destroy him.

_But._

He hesitated. When he saw the face beneath his claws he hesitated- _why, it's me!_ -and that had been his one mistake. The _Other_, had twisted his magic and slipped in-between time as it was reordered, escaping to locations unknown.

The crow screamed, a high, unearthly sound, and flew back to the Castle.

The filth-encrusted cobblestone streets of the Goblin City were eerily silent, not a soul was in sight. The crow flew higher, ragged talons extended as it swooped into a window of the Goblin Tower. Once inside, quiet lightning flashed in a series of blinding bursts, and where the crow had been, the Goblin King was now standing.

It was a Goblin King that would have sent any errant goblin packing with one glance. The King that the denziens of the Labyrinth knew and obeyed was an arrogant ruler that often teetered between distantly amused and cheerfully sadistic. This King that now stretched and shuddered, cracking joints accompanied by the sounds of creaking leather, was horribly different.

He was Terrible.

He finished stretching, the magic running out of his limbs for the time being, and stalked to the mirror that hung in the center of his chambers. It was suspended from chains wrapped around thick beams that ran the length of the room. Its silver surface was dirty and dull. Running gloved fingers over the blackened points of a once-gold medallion that hung heavy from his neck, he tried to concentrate.

Darkness was all he saw in the reflection, and anger poured into him.

Where was his power? Usurped by the Other? There was power, yes, but not enough. Not enough to draw out the Intruder. He had tried, yes. Earlier, he had seen The Girl in the mirror before, saw her there for a few shining seconds. She had been so close, so fresh and beautiful, and he had tried to grab her but his magic was not strong enough.

Yet.

Her. The Girl. She, who had caused him so much heartache by refusing his affections time and time again. Rejection was something that he had never encountered. It was the worst kind of pain he had ever faced: a total loss of control. And what filled him with fury, what made the thought absolutely _unbearable_ was that _she had driven him to **BEG. **_

_Just love me, fear me, do as I say and I will be your slave_

He wanted to howl, to rip, to break. For a few moments the thought of her replaced his thoughts on the _Other_, and his rage was now born not of hostility but of helplessness. He needed her, needed to control her.

Soon, very soon, she would be his. His and no one else's.

Soon.

Before Soon came, though, he must rest.

Unconsciously, he wrapped his fist around the tri-pointed pendant. The points dug into his skin, bruised it despite his leather gloves. He felt oddly comforted.

The Goblin King's sharpened teeth clicked horribly and his hard mouth drew downwards into a frown. Wiping superfluous drool from his lips, the Goblin King yawned. The mirror was empty and he was tired. He needed to sleep.

* * *

In another world, Jareth tossed restlessly in the moonlight, plagued with dreams of a yellow-eyed doppelganger that gibbered and howled as it tracked him through the Labyrinth.

Jareth had never run the Labyrinth himself, but as he felt the presence of the Other watching him, pursuing him, he was overwhelmed with sympathy for the thousands of humans he had put in the same situation.

Being hunted, after all, was something new to him.

In his dream, a crow flew overhead, screaming at him. It landed on the abandoned chair the Man With the Talking Hat used to occupy. Jareth blinked and in the span of one millisecond, the bird changed from a crow into the man who attacked him. Dressed all in midnight leather, with an outfit that sported numerous points and spikes at the shoulders, the sight made Jareth shiver. The man in black was lounging casually on the chair, one leg thrown over the arm, while guzzling a bottle of wine. His head was tipped back, eyes closed in hedonistic pleasure as the alcohol hit his stomach.

There was a tugging at his neck. Jareth looked down; around his throat was a silver coin dangling from a leather band. No, not dangling, it was hovering in mid-air as if drawn by an unseen magnet, pulling him forward. He had no choice but to follow.

He was ten feet away when the dark stranger spoke suddenly.

"_Who are you_?" Two yellow eyes with vertical corneas popped open and focused on him.

Jareth started; the voice coming out of the foreign throat was _his. _"Who are _you_?" Jareth countered. Talking in dreams was always surreal; he felt like his own voice was coming not from his throat but from the very air itself. The pull from the coin around his neck eased, but only slightly.

"I am the Eater of Worlds," the Goblin King croaked, rising slowly, "the Devourer of Lands. Don't get in my way."

Jareth sensed danger. "Who _are_ you?" he repeated.

"I am the Goblin King."

"_I_ am the Goblin King," Jareth said, confused.

The man in black threw the wine carafe across the courtyard and hissed like a snake. Jareth ducked just in time to avoid being hit by the flying bottle, but when the glass shattered, he was splattered with red wine. He touched his hand to the lukewarm stickiness that had ruined his clothes, and when he glanced down at his palm, it was not covered in wine.

It was drenched in _blood._

Jareth gasped, and his head shot up in alarm. The dark man was standing two inches away, his eyes ripe with madness, his rotting fangs grinning terribly, and he was reaching for Jareth's neck. And yet, even more horrible than the drooling visage was the fact that it was _almost as if he was staring at a mirror image of himself._

"_I will have what is mine_," the Goblin King said, and raised his razor-sharp claws.

* * *

Jareth jerked awake, breathing hard and covered in sweat. Bright morning sunlight fell across him in warm lines and made a stepladder pattern across his stomach, over the bed, and onto the hardwood floor. The nightmare was still with him; he lay gasping for a few moments, his eyes rolling around the room, expecting an attack from every corner.

Even though he was awake, he couldn't rid himself of the feeling of danger. Eventually the unexplained terror fled, as all dreams do, and he relaxed enough to be aware of his surroundings. A cold electricity rolled along his skin at the sight of the simple four poster bed he lay in, and the strange pictures on the wall. He tried to sit up and immediately regretted it; every inch of his body was sore. His left leg had a hot line of fire running through it; he bit down a harsh groan.

Jareth drew the blanket back from his leg. A bandage was taped to his thigh, and the thick pain was radiating from beneath it. Very carefully, he peeled the tape around the bandage up and inspected the wound. And frowned. He didn't know much, but he knew he should have healed from any injury by now. Instead, the deep gash was healing at a human pace. His first instinct was to reach into the eternal current of pure magic that ran through him and he did, but as he tried to connect to the power, he knew something was wrong.

_The magic was gone._

Dread overwhelmed him; he felt panic rising in his blood like a fever. How could his magic, the magic that was an unlimited source of power he could tap into at the slightest whim, be _gone_?

No…not entirely gone, he realized after a deeper inspection. Instead… it was like his magic had thinned to the point where it ran through his cupped fingers.

But at least there was some _THERE. _It was a start. At the very least it was enough for him to cling to, to wrap around himself like a thin piece of cotton.

Although he could not heal himself completely, he could accelerate the healing process. When finished he was abnormally tired, and he added that to the list of things that he didn't understand about what was going on with him. That piece of information mentally filed away, he finally took in this unfamiliar room. A nightstand on the other side of the bed was covered in picture frames. Very carefully, he scooted closer, finally managing to haul himself into a sitting position with another small groan. He bent over the photos, very carefully plucking one from the countertop and holding it into a shaft of sunlight.

As he stared at the two smiling faces, one a brightly beaming towheaded boy, and one a _very_ familiar girl, the events of the previous day came flooding back.

"Ohhh," he breathed, too overwhelmed by the turn of events to actually be afraid.

He _remembered_. He had been attacked but he escaped. He escaped and sought to find the one person in the human world who would at least understand a small part of his story, the one person who had been strong and willful enough to solve the Labyrinth.

_Sarah. _

And now he was at her mercy.

Feeling amazingly calm for his situation, Jareth set the picture down gently. If this was Sarah's bedroom, then where was-

Light snores drew his attention into the main room, and Jareth was amused at the un-ladylike sound. He stood slowly, one hand holding onto the bedpost for support and one holding the blanket around his waist in a wadded fist of fabric. He tested his weight on his injured leg; it felt like tiny knives were trying to burst from his skin when he put all his weight on it, but when he used it just for balance the pain was tolerable. Stiffly, he limped to the open doors of her bedroom, taking in her home. Sarah was sprawled on a couch in what looked to be the most uncomfortable position ever. No, he amended; she looked like a sleeping cat, with her limbs everywhere. One of her legs was thrown up and over the back of the couch, and one of her arms was tucked over her head and stuck out past the armrest. Her head was tilted back sharply, her mouth hanging open slightly. As he watched, she shifted slightly and emitted one loud snore before she settled into her deep sleep again.

The picture she painted was so funny that, for the first time since the whole mess began, Jareth grinned.

A heavy pressure in his bladder reminded him that he needed to find the bathing chambers, and very quickly. He retreated back into the bedroom; using various pieces of furniture as impromptu crutches to help him hobble to the door he assumed was the bathroom.

Being very careful to make sure he didn't wake Sarah, he pushed his way into the room.

Unlike most buildings that were converted into lofts, this bathroom wasn't just the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am obligatory loft bathroom. The original owners of the loft took special love and care to design a bathroom that was gracious, spacious, and envied by all other tenants. Longer than it was wide, it had a white mosaic floor with black accents in an art deco pattern, black tiles trickling up half the wall before gleaming white walls took over. In one corner was a glass shower and in the other was a deep bathtub that was set into a tiled base. Even though it was deceptively small, it was as open and airy as the main room, thanks to cloudy glass bricks that allowed the sunlight to flood the room without any privacy being interrupted.

Jareth didn't notice any of this. What did interest him, however, was the chair that was obviously this world's version of a chamber pot. He shut the door and shuffled urgently for the toilet, only to be stopped by the reflection in the mirror.

The blanket he was holding secure around his waist dropped as his hands flew to his face.

_Now_ he understood why Sarah had been so shocked.

The face staring at him was younger than he had been in a _very _long time, and the vicious attacker had marked it black and blue. A shaking hand rose to touch his swollen cheek, and even though the action was matched in the mirror, he couldn't reconcile the fact that the man in the mirror was him. He caught sight of his eyes, which widened when he saw the matching set that stared back at him. Red and swollen scratches ran along one side of his ribcage, and his hair was tangled with dried blood. His lower lip was swollen, and sensitive when he tentatively ran his tongue along the inside of it. He tasted blood. Greenish yellowish bruises in the shape of fingers dotted his neck, and suddenly flashes of his dream came back to him; of a twisted, darker version of himself chasing him, attacking him. The critical circuit breaker in his mind was flipped and Jareth made the connection. The man who attacked him was the man from his dream.

_I am the Eater of Worlds, the Devourer of lands. Don't get in my way_

What was going_ ON?_

Jareth clutched the counter and dropped his eyes, dismayed. He wasn't sure which bothered him more, his lost magic or the stranger in the mirror. And Sarah, the only girl to best him, was sleeping thirty feet away. He wouldn't have been more shocked if he had woken up and his Goblins had been quoting Shakespeare.

"Sarah?"

The whispered voice, so familiar, made Jareth raise his eyebrows and then his gaze to the mirror in front of him.

_"Hoggle?"_

"Your Majesty!" The dwarf was so relieved he was almost in tears. "Sarah said you found her but I almost didn't..." Hoggle trailed off as Jareth's words registered. "_What_ did you call me?"

"Hoggle. That _is_ your name, is it not? Or have I truly gone crazy?" he asked patiently.

"You...you called me Hoggle. You NEVER call me by my right name."

Jareth frowned in thought. "I don't?"

Hoggle's eyes widened further as he saw beneath the injuries to the newly formed face of the King of the Goblins.

"Damn my eyes," Hoggle moaned. "Who _are_ you?"

Jareth ran his fingers lightly over his smooth brow, skimming the unwrinkled skin of his face. "I am the Goblin King."

"Ohhhhh," the dwarf mourned, his raisin-hands wringing together, his bright blue eyes dimming in dear. "How can there be two Goblin Kings?"

"Hoggle," Jareth started, "I _am_ the Goblin King. What other King do you speak of?"

"The other one. The one in black. He _says _he is the Goblin King. He's running around the castle frightening the little ones, searching the Labyrinth for…for…" Hoggle trailed off.

"For me?" Jareth asked.

"He's already ordered the guards to scour the Labyrinth day and night! If they find nothing, then nothing is what they are fed. Some of the kitchen imps are tossing scraps to them when they can but…the goblins are tramping down the hedges, stomping through the Brownies' homes, destroying everything in search of a clue. They're desperate."

"Hoggle…tell the goblins to stop their search; he is not their King."

"I can't! Not me! I'm a coward under the _best_ of circumstances, now I am too afraid to even be in the same room with…with…"

"All right then. I am returning to the Underground." Jareth twisted his wrist to gather his magic…and then remembered. He slowly lowered his arm

"Your Majesty?" Hoggle had no idea what to say to this vulnerable King anymore than he knew how to deal with the brutal one.

"I…I cannot return," he whispered. "I have no magic."

"_What?"_ Fear struck anew in the dwarf's heart. "But…what will happen to us?"

Jareth had no answer. What of his people? What would they think of him, that he let a madman run loose in the Underground? That their King has no power to save them? Agonizing guilt weighed down on him; what if his mysterious condition was irreversible? What if he was trapped here?

No. Better not to panic. He made a decision. "Do not tell anyone we have spoken. It is better for my people to be in the dark rather than know I am…weakened. It is better that they have hope."

Hoggle agreed. Anything that involved not confronting anyone was okey-dokey with him.

"Contact me again in three days time," Jareth advised. The only problem was: he had no idea if he would have an answer in three days. But still he tried to appear confident, in control. It was what Hoggle, what _all_ of the creatures of the Underground expected of him.

Hoggle jumped as he heard something that was inaudible to Jareth in the Aboveground. The dwarf gasped. "He's coming!" and slammed the mirror shut, leaving Jareth staring at his reflection, black eye, scratches and all.

"Be careful," Jareth whispered, mainly to himself. Alone with his reflection, he sagged against the sink, frustration weighing him down to the bone.


	7. Chapter Six

Sarah dreamt. After the day she'd had, she was not surprised in the least to find that she was dreaming about the Labyrinth. But unlike those first dreams she'd had about returning to the Underground when she was still a teenager, in this dream she was wearing neither that tacky 1980's vest or her heart on her sleeve. In this dream she was in her well-worn sleep shorts and a faux-vintage Led Zeppelin shirt, and felt like she was a spy in enemy territory. She knew that when she woke up and looked down at herself, she would see Robert Plant's face grinning up at her. It never even occurred to her to wonder if this were not a dream, to wonder if perhaps she had fallen prey to a trap laid by the Goblin King. She had enough awareness to both walk down the rough stone path of the Labyrinth as well as propel herself to roll over and bury her face into the corduroy cushions of the couch she was sleeping on.

It was a most interesting cognizance.

"Hello?" she both called out in her dream and mumbled in her sleep.

Presently her sleeping consciousness flew on soft wings into the land of the fully dreaming. She was in the Labyrinth in her dream…but she did not feel like she was alone.

"Hello?" she called again, half-expecting to hear a tiny voice chirp back at her from a crack in the wall. In fact, the more she wandered down the long, moisture-laden corridors, the more she wished she _would_ see the blue-haired worm so she could take him up on his offer to come inside and meet his wife. This dream was…creepy. The eyes that grew out of the walls weren't just marveling at her, they were…studying her. Surveying her.

"Paranoid," she muttered, and started feeling her way through the unseen turns and twists until she stubbed her toe on a root that signaled the start of the hedge maze with enough force to bring dream tears to her eyes.

'Ow' was followed quickly with an impatient and slightly desperate 'hel-LO!'

She passed a tall metal urn that was propped precariously on a tri-foot base. She recognized it as the vase she and Hoggle climbed out of after her foray in the oubliette.When she was fifteen she hadn't noticed the empty space between the base of the receptacle and the cobblestones; now she was amazed by it. Her unease temporarily forgotten, she knelt and waved her hand below the urn. Nope. It was _not_ an illusion.

Sarah straightened, almost expecting to see Hoggle waiting for her. Her eyebrows furrowed and she bit back a gasp as she saw a crow perched on the lip of the urn. Where had it come from? She didn't want to scare it away, it was the first sign of life she'd come across in the otherwise abandoned Labyrinth.

That feeling lasted all of thirty seconds. It was just a bird but she felt like it was…no, she was being silly…but she felt like the bird was a lion and she was a gazelle caught in the open. This bird looked like it would peck her eyes out as soon look at her. The longer it stood, clicking its beak every few moments, the more uneasy she became until she was ready to bolt like some frightened prey.

Just as she made up her mind to turn and leave, the bird really did snap at her. It was so expected that she didn't actually think it would happen. Too late she jerked her arm back, clutching the bleeding gash.

Ow! That _hurt_. For a dream, it shouldn't hurt so much, but it did. Still, Sarah found a bit of her old self surfacing, not the one that spent hours hunched over a microscope, but the one that stood up to the Goblin King and declared his challenge was a piece of cake. Sometimes it wasn't so much not being afraid as not letting it be _known_ she was. "Shoo!" she cried, waving her uninjured arm at the evil-looking crow. "Go bother a scarecrow!"

Instead of obeying, it hopped into the urn.

Sarah blinked in surprise. She heard it cawing, the noise amplified by the bronze urn it sat in. It sounded hurt. Maybe it pecked at her because it was injured itself. She didn't want to but she also kind of _did _want to know. In her dream-mind she kept telling herself what curiosity killed…

Sarah stepped to the rim and leaned in.

A hand encased in black leather shot out and grabbed the lip of the urn three inches from her face. Sarah shrieked and leaped back. Her right knee tangled with her right foot and she fell backwards into a bush.

The hand seemed to take comfort in her scream, tapping out a dull beat on the bronze before tightening its grip. As Sarah watched in abject terror, a second hand appeared. It was followed by spiky, matted hair that was once blonde but was now so filthy it could only be called dishwater gray. The hair continued to rise, and now two golden yellow eyes peered over the edge of the urn and immediately fixated on her.

Was it possible to pee her pants in a dream? She wouldn't have thought so before but she was having a hard time remembering that as a man, THE man she had seen in the back of her Jeep, emerged impossibly from the small bronze urn with the flexibility of a ten year old Chinese acrobat. He kept coming and coming, unfolding into the fresh air like the night unfolds at the end of each day. He was all angles and black leather and impressive spikes that emerged from every possible space on his jerkin. He was like something out of every worst nightmare she'd ever had as a child. His grin was a hair too cruel and too wide. It was the smile of a killer shark.

She tried to run, to hide, but the branches of the bush were snagged in every possible fold of her oversized t-shirt and seemed to bind around her like a straightjacket. She struggled and they tightened with enough force to make her wince. However much control Ludo had over the rocks, this man seemed to wield the same power over shrubbery. She could do nothing but lie there as he stood regarding her.

As she lay there, as helpless as a bag of dusty potatoes, she saw a fairy swoop down from its nest in the yew tree closest to the man. Obviously the fairy didn't realize what a bad dude he was but it soon found out; before it could bite him he plucked it from the air in one grimy gloved hand and _squeezed_. Sarah heard a shrill scream, a sickening crunch, and the man in black tossed the limp corpse casually over his shoulder.

"Bitch shouldn't have messed with me," he explained so casually he sounded like he was discussing perennials. That was it. That was who he reminded her of: Charles Manson. With leather accessories.

The line between dream and reality suddenly became that much thinner.

"You," the dark man said, "I know who you are," he rasped, taking a step closer to her. "_Sarah_."

She had to bite back a full-throated scream. The voice that came from his throat was the voice of the Goblin King…only after he ate glass and then gargled with acid. But while the Jareth she was familiar with could turn her name into poetry, this man, this evil being in front of her, made the two syllable word sound like it came from the mouth of a poisonous snake.

"You're him," she found herself saying, as if dreaming inside her dream. "You're the Goblin King." He _wasn't_ though, not _really_. Just as the Jareth in her bed wasn't the Goblin King she remembered, this man wasn't either. This man was pure cruelty that was no longer tempered with the generosity that once caused a Goblin King to move the stars for her.

I have been generous up until now, but I can be cruel.

Sarah's fear doubled, and she had enough brain power functioning to note that fear was quite cold.

"Where are my friends?" she managed to ask over her terror.

"_I will deal with the traitors after I deal_ _with you_," he hissed, his mouth full of anger.

His words were not encouraging. "What do you want?" she whispered.

In the span of time it took for her to blink, he moved from across the courtyard to three inches in front of her face. His legs straddled hers, he leaned over her with a satisfied smile at her leafy constraints and the terror on her face. A dirty fingernail toyed idly with a lock of her hair before pulling it so tight tears popped out of her eyes.

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say," he mocked, "and I _might_ not tear out your pretty eyes." He raised a hand, the fingers hooked into claws.

"You precious thing," he crooned, sounding like Gollum in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. But it wasn't _that_ that caused her fear to spike like a knife in her heart. It was his tongue, black and wet and long decayed, rolling toward her, questing for an intimate kiss that set Sarah screaming like a fire bell.

SARAH WAKE

* * *

"…up! Wake up Sarah!"

Consciousness came washing over her like a bucket of cold water. Her heart, already racing from the nightmare, didn't slow down at the sight of jade green eyes peering down at her in concern. Her arms, freed from the dream branches, didn't attack the man that was gently shaking her awake, instead they wound tight around him and wouldn't let go. Her brain couldn't quite wrap around exactly who was holding her, and frankly she didn't care. All that mattered was his soothing voice and the gentle way he stroked her hair and how the combination of his words and his actions felt like a bastion of safety from the dream of the dark King. She realized, with some adult embarrassment, that she was so scared she was shivering like a wet dog and could not stop.

Eventually the shakes subsided. Eventually the immediate fear caused by the nightmare dulled, like all dreams-_good or bad_- do. Eventually she registered exactly what was being murmured in her ear- nonsensical words that were designed to calm and comfort. And a few seconds after that she realized who was doing the murmuring.

She pulled back and stared up at Jareth's badly bruised face. His eyes, as cool and as green as mint, were mere inches away.

He tried to say something, failed, and licked his lips before trying again.

"You were screaming," he offered as a means of explanation for why she was wrapped around him like a vine of creeping ivy.

Once the information had been processed, her first thought was not to retreat but to cuddle closer, pull him fully on top of her and let his energy, which had calmed her down to the point of relaxation, blanket her.

It was THAT thought that got her moving, tactfully withdrawing to a safe distance while still having the grace to blush at the fact that he was dripping water onto her hardwood floor and was wearing nothing but a towel that was draped haphazardly over his hips. She could still feel the bare skin of his shoulders beneath her palms from five feet away, and the front of her shirt was slightly damp from where she had leaned against him.

"I'm ok," she finally said, tucking her hair behind her ears and wiping a bit of sleep-drool from her mouth with the back of a hand. "I just had…a nightmare."

He regarded her solemnly. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Actually she really _didn't_, but wanting something and needing something were two different things. She nodded slowly. "But not right now. I…" She finally gave him a good hard look. "You have shampoo in your hair."

His eyes traveled upward and he knuckled away some errant bubbles that trickled down his forehead. "I was…bathing…when you started to scream."

"You heard me over the shower?"

"You were screaming very loudly."

Sarah wasn't sure what to say, so for a good thirty seconds they stared silently at each other, two former adversaries forced into a form of cooperation. One who had soap sliding slowly down his back, the other desperately trying not to remember how safe she felt around him.

"Why…don't you finish…whatever…and I'll make some coffee."

Jareth nodded and silently retreated to the bathroom. On autopilot, Sarah padded to the kitchen, grabbed an extra towel, and mopped up the puddle he'd made on the floor before starting to brew coffee. By the time Jareth emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, wearing her robe that had been hanging on a hook inside the door and smelling of her expensive bath soaps, Sarah had gone through two cups of coffee and had maintained enough of a grip on her newly-formed reality that would allow her to go about her day without screaming hysterically. She poured him a cup, added cream and sugar and handed it to him. "Here."

"Your dream-" he began in that tone of voice that suggested a dramatic soliloquy of Shakespearean proportions, but before he could continue, she held up her hand.

"Please…let's wait until after breakfast before we deal with this. I can't take philosophical discussions before I've had a shower. Okay?"

Jareth nodded, amused by her bluntness. "Whatever you say, Sarah."

In the doorway she paused. "How is your leg?"

"Tolerable."

"I left you a pill on the nightstand last night. Take it…it should help."

"Thank you." He didn't make a move, and she wondered if he was being macho or if perhaps drugs weren't the best thing for him.

Sarah wanted to say something else, but she just ducked her head and shut the bathroom door. It was only just then that she realized there was a mirror in the bathroom. It made her stomach constrict painfully, but she studied its silver surface carefully for a few minutes before dismissing it. If something had tried to come out of it, Jareth would have said something.

She took her time, but did it quickly; making sure all traces of dirt and dried blood were gone from her hair, from under her fingernails, between her toes. She also stubbornly shut down her subconscious while she shaved her legs, sternly telling herself she was not doing it solely because of her unexpected roommate.

Swathed from head to toe in an oversized towel, she stepped from the bathroom twenty minutes after she went in. The hot water tank may have been drained, but at least she was now sweet-smelling, clean, and moderately hairless. And way more alert than she had been.

She stood in front of her closet. She wasn't sure _what_ impression she wanted to make on him or _why_ it mattered. Still, after brief consideration, she finally chose a wraparound circle skirt, a lace camisole from a rummage sale and a lightweight cardigan sweater the color of ripe limes. Casually feminine. That was her. Yeah. Right. If anyone from her department saw her like this, they'd see through it in a second. She twisted her hair into a knot on the nape of her neck and sighed. Now or never.

When she peeked out the bedroom doors Jareth was obscured by the stainless steel refrigerator door. He looked like he was rummaging and muttering to himself. At first she thought he must be mumbling some kind of spell or curse; what else would the Goblin King be saying under his breath while dressed in her silk robe and wandering barefoot around her kitchen?

She approached quietly, and finally made out what he was saying.

"No, not enough salt. Too runny, still too runny."

He was either deliberately or unintentionally ignoring her. When she peeked over the tall island that served as a divider for the kitchen from the rest of the loft _and_ a kitchen counter, the eggs that were frying nicely in a pan finally registered in her nostrils.

She was too surprised to help herself. "You can cook!"

He finally looked up and smiled. The effect was devastating; he looked more like a student from the art department who had crashed on her couch after a bar fight than...whatever he was.

"I can."

Sarah maneuvered around the corner of the island to survey the damage and instead found a very passable mound of buttered toast and sliced fruit that made her stomach rumble. "I...didn't know you could cook," she repeated lamely.

"I have a fair grasp of how your world works," he assured her.

She could ask how. Or she could sit and eat some toast. The answer to the former scared her- she was picturing weekend cooking classes at the YMCA attended by pixies and fairies- so she chose to go with the latter, and crammed a slice in her mouth while setting two plates and silverware on the island's raised counter.

"Do you normally eat...eggs?" Trivial conversation. She wasn't ready to discuss yesterday or her dream last night, so she was making trivial conversation with the Goblin King. In a robe.

"I usually am satisfied with slimy snails and puppy dog tails." He removed the pan from the burner and scooped the pile of scrambled eggs onto a serving plate.

She paused in pouring milk and turned slightly green. "Are you serious?"

His smile was wide. "No."

Four tall stools were arranged around the sides; Jareth perched gingerly on one, mindful of both his injuries and his undressed state beneath the robe.

"You're in a good mood," she stated carefully, not sure how she would be received. "For someone who went through something very...traumatic...yesterday."

"I am not sure how else to feel. For the moment I am rested, bathed, and being fed. For someone in my situation, just that is enough to put me in a…good mood, as you call it."

She contemplated this optimistic man before her as she munched on a piece of toast. "Eggs?" she asked him, and when he nodded, she served him up some as well as fresh grapes and cantaloupe. Since he didn't offer any other conversation topics, she followed suit and busied herself with eating a well-prepared breakfast.

"I am very curious about your dream. You see, I had a nightmare last night as well," he confessed in between bites of toast.

Sarah put down her fork rather calmly. If he wanted to discuss nightmares, that meant she had to think about hers, and thinking about hers made her reconsider the wisdom behind having food in her stomach before they talked. Because right now, she wanted to-

She could do this. "What about?"

"I dreamt about the man who attacked me."

She paused for only a fraction of a second. "I did too."

"What did he do?"

"You first."

He leaned back in his chair and regarded her solemnly. "You do nottrust me."

"I never said I did." No, but she _did_ bring him home and gave him her bed and asked a friend to break the law for him. She felt _something_ for him, but she wasn't sure if it was merely pity or something more, something like trust. All she _could_ be certain about was that no matter which one it was, he was still the most beautiful man she had ever seen. And that was a very dangerous thought to have lurking in her skull. Sarah rubbed between her eyes. "Fine. I dreamt I was walking in the Labyrinth. I saw a crow and the crow turned into…" she couldn't think of the right name. "This horrible man with yellow eyes who looked like you but wasn't." She left it at that; she really wasn't comfortable telling him how the man in black had pressed himself against her, how he had threatened her first with violence and then with lust.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"I amnot sure yet," Jareth said slowly. "ButI cannot imagine it isgood that we are both dreaming of him."

"I…" It was too late to stop now. "I also saw him in a mirror. Yesterday, when Roger took you up to his lab. I looked in the rearview mirror and…he was there. He scared the shit out of me."

Jareth muttered something inaudible.

"What was that?"

He lifted his head. "Mirrors. This morning I found Hoggle in your bathroom mirror asking for you."

"_And you didn't wake me up immediately_?" She remembered the note of fear in her friend's voice, a look of pure sadness on his face; he thought she had abandoned him and in a way he was right. "Is he all right? What did he say? Does he know what's going on?"

He held up a hand to calm her questions. "He is fine. He does not know any more than we do at this point- that there is a man in black who looks like me, who is terrorizing my people, and who is claiming to be the King of the Goblins. What I do not understand is: how is that possible? _I_ am the Goblin King."

Sarah broke it to him gently. "No, you're not."

He looked at her, surprise and shock plastered across his youthful features. He started to say something but Sarah cut him off.

"I mean...you are. But you're also _not_. You're _not_ the one who took my brother. You don't _look_ like him. You don't _act_ like him; he was...frightening. Charming too, but he used that charm as a weapon, to manipulate me. I don't _get_ any of that from you. You're too..._nice_." She took a deep breath. "You're not the Goblin King that I remember. And the man in black isn't either. Which leaves me with one question."

His voice was husky. "And that is?"

"If neither of you are the Goblin King...then _where _is the _real_ King?"

The questions were piling up, and neither one had any answers. "Did Hoggle say anything else?" she finally asked softly.

"He…I told him to wait three days and then contact us again. I wanted to return to the Underground to help them right then…but at this time I cannot."

"You're stuck here?" _With me_, was the unspoken addition.

"It would seem so."

Sarah closed her eyes and counted to ten. _Three days_? She had to live with Jareth for three days? "Will you know what to do in three days?"

"I imagine I ought to." But the true answer was held in his eyes: he had no freaking clue what had happened or what to do next. And she couldn't even get upset at him- he was being more than honest with her.

How did she know that? How did she know he was being honest? While each mulled over their private thoughts, she came to the conclusion that it was the same way she knew-_just knew_- that the man in black from her dream was Bad with a capital B. And if she was trusting him to be honest with her, it meant her subconscious trusted him a lot more than her brain did.

A strange thought slipped in that caused her the corners of her mouth to tilt up: _why wasn't her perception this good with normal males_?

"Did you mean what you said yesterday?" he asked quietly, breaking through her thoughts.

"Which part? I said a lot yesterday." She began to clear the dishes.

"You said you could notwalk away from anyone in need. Even me. Did you mean that?"

"I mean what I say. Which I guess means we're together for a few days."

A tentative smile crept onto his face. "That makes me happier than you can imagine…"

At his words, her heart rate sped up.

He continued, "…because it was going to be a trifle difficult managing to explain how I heal so fast to a stranger."

Oh.

Sarah finished with the dishes. "Is that why your leg doesn't look as bad as it did last night? You heal faster?"

"I _should _be _impervious_. But yes, I do."

"That's going to be a problem," she mused, half to herself. "Roger expects to have a look at you today or tomorrow. I don't know how we're going to explain why a day old incision looks like a partially healed scar."

"I vaguely remember a young gentleman with brown hair, a very cold table, and a very _large…" _Jareth's eyebrow rose very saucily, "…needle. Was that Roger?"

"Yes." She was grinning from the cold table comment.

"This Roger…I owe him my life?"

"Yes," she agreed. "You do."

"And you, Sarah," Jareth looked at her so intently, looking like a King even in a women's bathrobe. The picture he painted, sitting casually at her kitchen counter with his hands folded around a coffee mug, made his injuries seem that much more grievous- the eggplant purple of his left eye, the scrape along his jaw. "I owe you my life as well. For that, I am in your debt."

Her debt. The possibilities were endless. The likeliness of any of them actually happening were next to nothing.

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," she muttered, busying herself with wiping the stove. "Until we figure out _who_ that guy is, _why_ he attacked you, _what _he's doing in our dreams and _how_ to get you home, we're kind of up the creek without a paddle."

"Chickens? Paddle?" Jareth looked unutterably confused and not that all upset about it. It was a very cute expression on him, and Sarah smiled.

"Figure of speech." She sighed and squinted. "Three days, huh? Well…you're going to need clothes. I might have something you can wear 'til we get to the mall..." On her way to her bedroom she brushed by Jareth. He caught her hand in his, pulled her to a stop. Pinned by his gaze, her heart was slamming against her chest so loud she thought he might hear as she stood before him, while he placed her hand in between his two palms. They were very warm.

"I am serious," he reiterated. "I am eternally grateful for your help." He smiled up at her, just a little flash of his perfect white teeth, his skin flawless behind the injuries. Sarah stood so close to him she could see the dark gold lashes that rimmed his eyes so thickly it looked as if he wore eyeliner. She wasn't sure what to do, so she smiled just a little and brought her other hand on top of his. A pact. She was making a wordless pact to help Jareth come what may. Sometime in between putting him to bed last night and eating eggs with him this morning, she came to trust him enough to pledge herself to help him.

And suddenly her life at the university, her standing in the Bio department, even her credit card payments seemed unimportant and very far away.

Even more suddenly, the front door knob rattled and Gary walked into the apartment.

All hell broke loose.


	8. Chapter Seven

Soap Operas didn't have timing as good.

Picture this: a fairly beautiful woman in her early twenties. She's only rated as _'fairly' _because her eyebrows are a little too thick, her front teeth are barely on the acceptable side of crooked, and her face is ever so slightly too round. There is still a bit of baby fat in the cheeks and at the hips that, even after twenty-odd years, still hasn't gone away. But those are her only flaws and they are minor at that. It is her eyes, pale green and tilted upwards like a mischievous cat, her thick brown hair that can only be described as _lustrous_, skin the color of cream, and the way her smile can do anything- warn, seduce, and all the emotions in between -that allow the word _'beautiful' _to be used.

She is standing close enough to the man seated in front of her for her skirt to brush lightly against the silk of his robe.

The man is, for lack of a better word- _stunning_, despite the fading purple bruise that orbits one eye and angry red scratches along the side of his face. His hair is the color of ripe wheat as the sun shines on it; a honey blonde with shots of pure gold streaking through. He isn't tan but he isn't pale, he is merely healthy. He is too young to have wrinkles but whoever is looking at him knows that when his time comes, his lines and creases will come from laughing, not frowning. His entire being, the way he talks, the way he moves, the way he gazes; _everything_ is done with such a fluid grace and elegance it is impossible not to feel awkward around him. All of this, and he has dimples as well.

She is standing close to him as he perches on the stool in front of her. She is blushing under his gaze. Their hands form a his-hers-his-hers tower of palms and fingers, and there is an energy in the air as they silently agree to an unnamed pact. They are having, what she would define as: a _moment_.

Enter the ex-boyfriend.

No, the _woman's_ ex-boyfriend.

The ex-boyfriend who recently dumped her in a blaze of jealous accusations and hurt feelings.

The ex-boyfriend who is expecting her to be gone so he can come get miscellaneous stuff that he's left there over the seven months they dated. He sees nothing wrong with coming in while she's off doing field research; it saves him a confrontation. It's his day for sneaking around; he has already slipped out of the bed of a cute undergrad from his Psych 101 class. It isn't a good idea to get involved with someone who he has to give a grade to in a month, but he and she understand it was a rebound fuck- nothing more. He may worry about it a little bit in three and a half weeks, but right now he is still a little drunk, right now he's wearing the clothes he went to the bar in last night, and right now he's walking into his ex-girlfriend's purportedly deserted apartment, only to find her standing awfully close to a gorgeous guy- _and they were sharing a **moment**._

Cue scene.

* * *

Jareth's back was to the door, so his first impression of the visitor was based off Sarah's expression. Her mouth, previously set in a small determined smile, dropped open as her gaze slipped from Jareth to just over his shoulder. Her eyes widened and her cheeks turned the color of the red apples in the bowl on the counter beside them. In the awkward silence that followed, he had enough time to wonder what sort of a person would cause such a reaction from Sarah. She yanked her hands from his and took one, two, three awkward steps backward.

"…Gary!"

The fact that the word came out on a laugh did not fool Jareth; she was obviously _not_ happy to see the impromptu visitor. His hunch was confirmed when her gaze darted from Gary to Jareth and back to Gary, as if her stare was a restless butterfly that couldn't decide where to land.

Jareth turned around.

Oh my. Sarah was dating an ogre.

No, not exactly. An ogre upon initial impression because of his height and breadth. This man, this Gary, was much more handsome than an ogre. Although considering how ugly ogres were, that wasn't necessarily a compliment.

Jareth's admitted limited knowledge of how Sarah's world worked was exactly that: limited. If he knew more, he might have thought Gary was a first string linebacker for the NFL. Instead, he drew upon his own life to best define Gary: if the mechanical guard for the gates to the Goblin City ever malfunctioned again (and it really hasn't worked right since Hoggle messed with it) Gary would be a suitable replacement.

All this ran through Jareth's head in the span of time it took for Sarah to swim through the uncomfortable silence and find her voice.

"What are you doing here?"

"What are _YOU_ doing here?" Gary shot back.

The subsiding blush in Sarah's cheeks redoubled. Whether it was due to anger or embarrassment, Jareth couldn't tell.

"I _live_ here."

"You said you were going away this weekend."

"I did. I came back early."

"Well, I was gonna pick up my stuff while you were out." Gary's tone reminded Jareth of a petulant child. "Am I interrupting something?" Out of any other mouth the words would have been a polite excusal for the intrusion. In Gary's mouth it was an accusation.

Remaining wisely silent, Jareth turned back to Sarah who was visibly trying to regain her composure.

"No. This is Jareth…he's a friend of mine from high school. Jareth, this is Gary."

Despite the urge to give the man a lecture in courtesy, decorum won out: Jareth stood and offered Gary his hand. Gary looked at it, dismissed it with a raised eyebrow, and then cocked his head at Sarah. "We need to talk."

Without waiting for her response he lumbered across the loft to the bedroom. He stood by the open glass paned French doors.

There was a moment of high expectation on Jareth's part. Surely Sarah, the woman who once turned down her dreams in favor of saving her baby brother, the woman who was strong enough to help someone she had only known as an adversary, would not heel at such a rude command like a disciplined puppy.

Sarah flashed Jareth an unreadable look and joined Gary in the bedroom. He shut the doors firmly behind them after a dirty glance at Jareth.

He looked down and saw his hand was still extended in greeting. Slowly he let it drift back down to his side. Sat back down on the stool and tried very hard not to hear the conversation that was taking place in hushed tones.

It was impossible. His hearing was better than the average human.

"You wanted to talk?" This from Sarah.

"Who is that guy?"

"I told you. He's a friend from high school. He's staying here a few days." Jareth turned his head just as Sarah peeked at him through the lace curtains. He could feel the weight of her gaze and feigned non-interest in the tiled countertop.

"I thought you said you valued your privacy, that's why you didn't want to move in with me," Gary accused.

"No, I said I thought it was too soon, and then you dumped me."

"Why is he wearing your robe?"

The older, more mature and _much_ more serene Sarah was not lost on Jareth. Since he abruptly dropped into her life, he'd watched her let go of anger that, ten years ago, would have caused a temper tantrum of epic proportions. Gary was obviously testing the limits of her hard-earned maturity in a way Jareth had not, because Sarah's old impatience was surfacing as she stood against the unspoken accusation.

"The airline lost his luggage, we haven't had time to go shopping. What's your problem?" There was a pause. Then: "Gary…are …are you _drunk_?"

There was a longer pause. "_No_."

"You look…tired." She sounded like she didn't believe him. "Do you want some coffee?"

"Did you fuck him?"

Jareth glanced sharply at the closed doors. Although the viewed was mostly blocked by lace curtains that hung on the bedroom side of the glass-paned doors, he could still distinguish Gary's thick tree stump legs, Sarah's arms crossed over her chest, and the way her jaw dropped at the question.

"_What_?"

"Admit it. You weren't doing _field research_, you were doing your _friend_."

"Gary!"

"Did you fuck him?" Harsher now. "Come on Sarah, _did you_?"

Oh Sarah, Jareth thought sadly, _what happened to the willful girl I knew, that you would choose a man like this_?

, Jareth thought sadly? 

"What is _wrong_ with you?" There was only a short pause followed by a cry of surprise from Sarah. "Hey!"

"_Why him and not me, huh? **Why**_!"

"Let _go_ of me. Gary, let _go_, you're _hurting_ me!"

All Jareth could see was sharp movements behind the lace curtains.

It was all he needed to see. Alarms he hadn't even known existed inside of him were going off, shrieking in their intensity. His powers may be thinned and his injuries may still be fresh, but it took him all of two seconds as, in a blur of magic and valor, he crossed the loft, opened the French doors to the bedroom, and pried Gary's hand off Sarah's arm. The moment Sarah was free she retreated from Gary as fast as she could, until she bumped into the chest of drawers by her bedside. Jareth tried to reassure her with a look before turning the full weight of his attention to Gary, who was struggling to free his hand from Jareth's grasp. The taller man drew a meaty fist back for a punch but before it connected, it too was caught in Jareth's steel grip.

"I would not do that if I were you," Jareth said calmly. "Now, apologize."

"Get the _fuck_ off me!"

"_Apologize_."

Garystood sweating and red-faced, smelling of stale beer, of anger and jealousy. He was the exact opposite of Jareth, who looked as if he were doing nothing more strenuous than discussing perennials to a garden club. Realizing he was trapped, Gary finally apologized. "I'm sorry," he bit out. Immediately Jareth moved him gently but forcefully to the front door. His injured leg was screaming obscenities at him, as was Gary, but he refused to limp or to let the situation continue. The door opened, Gary was released. He stood still for a moment, rubbing his wrist in the same hurt way Sarah was rubbing her elbow, and contemplating whether or not he should try to reclaim some of his lost dignity or if he should retreat. Jareth stood calmly, confident, and waited for Gary to calculate the odds.

Self-preservation won out; he chose not to fight back…with fists.

"Just so you know, you're not the only one who got laid last night."

Sometimes words are just as bad as fists. Sarah paled.

"Gary, you're drunk," she managed bravely, ignoring his deliberate goading. "Give me the key and go home."

Gary fished it out of his jeans pocket and threw it on the floor.

"Bitch," he said spitefully, and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

Jareth stood outside the doors to her bedroom in a state of confusion.

After Gary's insult dissolved into the awkward silence that followed it, Sarah had wordlessly gone into the bedroom. A few seconds later she came back out with a handful of clothing. Shoving it in Jareth's hands, she muttered a small '_put these on'_ and excused herself once again, this time with the doors firmly shut.

The clothes fit _horribly_, as Jareth discovered. In fact, before he had the idea to use the belt of the bathrobe on the pants, he had shuffled around the apartment with his hands holding up the waistband.

Now the pain in his leg faded to a dull throb once again, his pants were no longer falling down, and it was becoming very hard to ignore the fact that Sarah was crying in the bedroom. Courtesy suggested that since she closed the doors to him, she obviously wanted to be alone. Compassion, however, was telling him he ought to see what he could do to help her. Apparently his heart was broadcasting on a stronger frequency because he quietly opened one of the glass doors and slipped into her bedroom.

Sarah was sitting on the bed with her back to him. The slight curvature of her back, and the way her face was pointed at the corner indicated that yes, she had indeed been crying. As he crossed the room slowly he saw the curve of her spine stiffen, and her head turn slightly as she heard his footsteps. She didn't say anything, though, and he took a small amount of comfort in that.

Jareth perched on the bed beside her. This side of Sarah was so unexpected he wasn't sure what to say to her. She seemed as fragile as a glass figurine.

When she finally spoke her voice was soft but strong. "I really wish you hadn't seen that," she admitted quietly, wiping her eyes. "This situation is odd enough, and now we have my ex-boyfriend barging in and accusing me of infidelities." She threw a soggy tissue at the wastebasket; it fell short. They both used it as a focus point for eyes that weren't ready to meet just yet. "God…he's really messed up over the break up. He only drinks when he's upset."

Knowledge is power; he supposed he ought to ask. "It was recent?"

"Yeah," she sighed, mock-casually while her fingers toyed with the blanket, "a few days ago. He wanted me to move in with him, I told him no. I thought he was okay with my decision but I was wrong. He got real mad, said he didn't want to-" Here her voice choked up a bit. "-waste his time anymore, and he broke up with me. End of story." She paused. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"Has he..hurt you before?" The question came out more tense than he intended.

Sarah shook her head vehemently. "No. Never. Not even if he's drunk. I don't know what got into him today. I think maybe seeing-" She looked at him for the first time "-you…" Sarah began laughing despite her tears. "_What_ are you _wearing_?"

Jareth looked down at himself. "The clothes you gave me."

Laughter could flow just as hard as tears, and Sarah was giggling so much she had to wipe her eyes with a new tissue.

Yes, the flimsy short-sleeved shirt that declared "_Kiss Me, I'm Irish_" in a faded red script did seem a trifle absurd when Jareth saw it, and yes, it was the ugliest, tackiest shirt he had ever worn, but if it made Sarah smile, he decided right then and there he wouldn't mind wearing the shirt the rest of his stay with her.

"God that is the ugliest shirt _ever_. We have to go shopping; you _can't_ wear that around."

Despite his resolve of a few seconds earlier, Jareth felt relieved. "I am glad to see I amuse you."

"Its not you," she insisted after a fresh string of snickers, "its just…you're so much smaller than Gary…his clothes don't fit you at all."

"You put me in his clothes?" _Is _that_ what that smell was_?

"Only for a little bit," she promised, patting Jareth's hand. "And we'll throw them out the first second we can."

"You're not going to give them back?" Jareth inquired innocently.

Sarah flashed him an incredulous look, the first look as the old Sarah since Gary had walked in the apartment.

"Are you _kidding_?"

* * *

End of scene.

Fade to black.

But don't turn off the camera.

Instead, watch the darkness.

There is something alive in it.

He waits in the darkness with you. You may be scared of the dark, but he's not.

He feels at home in the dark. Darkness is a comforting blanket he can wrap himself in, protect himself from the feeling of wrongness that invades- that _violates _-his entire being.

He has found that he is not in control. He is trapped; has, in fact, spent his whole life trapped.

Trapped _where_?

He does not know.

In the darkness, yellow eyes glow with anger.

You are terrified, thinking that He is looking at you, but you are wrong. He is looking inward. He tries to remember…remember back to a time when he did not feel violated…he tries to remember _Before_ but he cannot. It is as if his history is on a chalkboard that has been erased. He existed, Before, but can not recall anything.

It is maddening.

You do not want a creature like this to be mad.

Overwhelmed, he whimpers once; the sound of a lost and scared animal, before his throat closes and his head jerks around, searching for someone who has seen his control slip. You hide in the dark, hoping he does not see, you shiver as his helpless moans turn into gibbering growls.

He is furious. A loss of control means he is weak. He is not WEAK. He is not _afraid_. _He could not be afraid_.

He is the Goblin King.

His subjects obey him.

The Labyrinth obeys him.

But still he is not in control.

No one dares question him.

Except for two.

The Imposter.

And _her_.

He closes his eyes to picture her. He does not remember Before but he can remember _her_. She was so young and fresh and so afraid of him. _Burning_ with anger.

So delicious.

He thinks of her rejection, and it makes the rage in his stomach want to spill out his throat. He had been so sure she was his. The fear in her eyes was beautiful, her desperation tasted so sweet as she ran after her brother, and he had smiled. She fell into the oubliette. She ate the peach. She chose to dance with him. She forgot.

Then, somehow, in some _impossible_ way, she _remembered_. Whereas he could not, she _somehow _managed to _remember_. She remembered, and in doing so turned his world upside down.

As he was _loathe_ to discover, the perspective of this new world where the stars had shifted and where he had no power over her was _devastating_.

He cannot think about what happened After. After she jumped. After she defied him.

After she destroyed him.

A howl rises out of his throat; not the tortured whimper of a scared animal but the roar of a predator denied it's prey.

You know you are about to die when you hear a sound like that.

You run away, through the darkness, away from the howl. You stumble, you fall, you cry, you pray to wake up from this nightmare. What you do not know is you are already forgotten by the half-man in the darkness.

He is busy plotting.

For now the Imposter, the doppelganger with his face, is not his concern. Now all he can think about is _her_.

Once she remembered all she forgot. Now _he_ has forgotten. She will help him remember. _She will help him, or else she will_


	9. Chapter Eight

"I was thinking."

They were driving down Main Street on their way to one of the thousands of super-stores that populated the country. All their clothing, underwear, footwear, and food needs under one roof. Normally Sarah abhorred places like these but desperate times called for desperate measures. And judging by the cherry red flip flops- _hers_ -that Jareth was forced to wear, the situation was _most_ desperate. He looked like a mismatched vagabond.

Actually, '_bum_' was a more accurate description, but it was an acceptable one. He'd allowed her to pull his hair back in a low ponytail and, like he predicted, his bruises and scratches were healing at an incredible rate. At first, second, and third glance, he looked like an everyday student that hung around on a college campus deliberately not going to classes instead of a magical being in a crisis. '_Bum_' she could live with…for now.

"I was thinking," she repeated, forcing her mental train to follow the original thought, "that we need to be careful."

Jareth regarded her. "In what way?"

"Well…we have three days before Hoggle contacts us again. That gives us seventy two hours in which we need to figure out what's happened to you, find out how to fix it, and come up with a way to get you home, all while pretending like we knew each other way back when if we bump into anyone I know." It was a mouthful. Rattling it off one point at a time made it seem so easy. "I'll help you in any way I can, but if we run into _anyone_, let me do the talking."

"Do you think we will?"

Sarah shrugged and squinted as the sun cleared a cloud and hit her in the eyes with golden light. She wished for another pair of sunglasses; she'd given hers to Jareth. Used to the muted sun of the Underground, he said the bright sunshine hurt his eyes.

"This is a small town. I'm preparing for the worst."

"Is the worst worse than Gary?"

She rolled her eyes at his playful remark. "Believe me, it could get much worse. We could bump into my parents."

They drove in amiable silence for a few moments, during which Sarah contemplated exactly what she ought to be saying to him. How does one make small talk in this kind of situation?

She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He was slumped in his seat with a casual grace, his good leg tucked under him, and his was completely absorbed in watching his hand as it rode the wind outside the window.

Sarah turned her attention back to the traffic in front of her, slowed for a red light, and admitted to herself that maybe there was no such thing as small talk with the Goblin King. The light turned green and she continued down the street.

Before she could think of anything, Jareth decided to start the small talk for her. Only his idea of small talk turned out to be rather _big_.

"Do you get along better with your stepmother now?"

Her hands jerked and the Jeep swerved. The car horn of the irate mother in the van next to her blared harshly and she swerved back into her own lane. Once her heart rate slowed, Sarah shot Jareth a disbelieving look.

"_How_ did you _know_ about _that_?"

Jareth slowly released his death grip on the dashboard, looking like he wished he'd kept his mouth shut. "Is that a no?"

Her lips pursed. "It's a yes. How did you know?" Sarah repeated, trying to glare at him and drive at the same time.

"She…she was one of the reasons you had such problems with your brother, yes?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Your wicked stepmother," he said softly.

Sarah was silent.

Jareth began quoting words she hadn't thought of in years. "'…_until one night, when she was tired from doing housework, and hurt by the harsh words of her stepmother, and she could no longer stand it_.'"

In a forty eight hour period of extremely weird scenarios, hearing those words from his mouth rated high on the scale of weirdness. "You remember _that_ but you don't remember who was chasing you?"

"I remember who was chasing me. I just do not know who it is."

Sarah's hands tightened on the steering wheel. She was beginning to feel like she was in a Laurel and Hardy routine. Especially with the candid way Jareth insisted on answering her questions. If maybe there was a trace of sarcasm in his words, she could pounce on him and really start to yell. But there was none. Zip, zilch, nada. It was as if every mean bone had been taken out of his body.

Sarah caught her breath.

And an SUV filled to the brim with screaming kids cut her off at the entrance to the parking lot. She laid on the horn and followed the van into the parking lot, muttering under her breath.

_Let the fun begin_, she said silently, and that thought replaced any idea that might have been forming about Jareth's situation.

It was a shame too. She was closer to the truth than she could possibly have known.

* * *

It was a bright sunny day and it seemed like half the town had decided to spend it at the most depressing place she could think of: the Mega Super Store. There were so many cars in the parking lot that Sarah decided against her better judgment and dropped Jareth off at the entrance while she parked the Jeep. She gave him strict instructions not to move from the spot he was standing on. She was hesitant about letting him fend for himself outside of the place well known for the tackiest human behavior on the planet, but it was either that or force him to walk the half mile between the closest parking space and the store.

She should have listened to her inner warning signals. When she finally emerged from the sea of cars and neared the entrance, he wasn't in the spot she initially deposited him on.

Sarah spied through the crowds of people going into the store, leaving the store, and those groups of carefully dressed teens who were neither going nor leaving but simply _being seen_, and she mentally cursed herself. Without his spiky hair and trademark outrageous clothes, he blended into the background like no one's business.

Sarah visually scanned a group of giggling teenage girls, passed over them, and then her gaze slipped back to them in disbelief. Her eyes bugged out of her head and for a moment she truly knew what it was like to have a heart attack.

Jareth. He was surrounded by a pack of tanned and giggling sixteen-year-old girls. Every single one had on the identical uniform of short minis that looked more like headbands than skirts, low-cut tops that emphasized every inch of young cleavage, platform flip-flops and was topped off with brightly painted toenails. All of them were in some sort of pose that Sarah supposed was intended to entice but in reality looked rather forced. As she neared, one of them, her hair an unnatural shade of blonde, was asking Jareth what his favorite band was. His eyes caught Sarah's over the top of the teen's perfectly coiffed hair, and she had to stifle a grin.

If she harbored any residual ill will towards the man who once stole her baby brother, she could have paid him back in spades by leaving him there with the girls. Five minutes with them would have been a lifetime's worth of revenge.

Sarah stepped in behind him. As smooth as silk and without looking at her, he slipped his hand into hers and held on tight. She doubted he'd let her go even if she asked him to. It was the only sign he gave that he was unnerved by the situation.

"Sarah, this is Mandy, Tiffiny, Brandy, Heather, Heather, and Kat." He gestured to each girl as he said her name.

The group of hormonal teens spoke as one. "Hiiiiiii."

One girl leaned in to her friend and whispered. They were looking at Sarah and Jareth's intertwined hands. It took a supreme amount of effort not to roll her eyes. Who were they kidding?

"We were just inviting Jareth to see our friends play in a band tonight," one blonde said. Sarah forgot if it was the Tiffiny or the Mandy. She did notice, however, that not one of them extended the invitation to include her.

"Sorry ladies," Jareth was saying before she could come up with a caustic retort, "but we already have plans."

It took another three minutes of oos and ahs and coy double checking to affirm that _oh_, _no_, was he _suuuure _he was busy? '_Oh, it was so nice to meet the both of you' _was included somewhere in the conversation but the eyes below the six sets of perfectly sculpted eyebrows told Sarah that the correct translation was: _oh, it was so nice to meet YOU, _Jareth

By the time they excused themselves from the pack and entered the store, Sarah was ready to say 'screw the budget' and go steal clothes from her dad. Yeah, explaining that a man was living with her, as well as any explanation about his lack of clothes to her father seemed like a piece of cake compared to the maelstrom of humanity that awaited them amidst cheap fluorescent lighting and even cheaper clothes.

Just as Sarah was wishing she had enough money to buy Jareth real clothes, clothes that were suitable for a Goblin King, Jareth squeezed her hand and bestowed the biggest, most relieved smile she'd ever seen on his face. Before she could say anything, he dipped down and, surprise of all surprises, kissed her softly on the cheek.

"Thank you. From the bottom of my heart."

A knight in shining armor on a white horse carrying a box of Godiva chocolates had nothing on Jareth.

Sarah did the only thing she could do: she grabbed a shopping cart from the bottomless pit of despair, also known as the Kart Korral (it was so labeled) and with Jareth in tow, headed to the Men's clothing department.

"Well," she explained to him as they dodged carts pushed by harassed looking moms, "I don't know if you use money in your…world…but we're on a tight budget." They were slower than the flow of traffic around them, but Sarah had no choice. Jareth was healing, yes, but it was obvious he was still favoring his good leg. He walked slow so she walked slow. "No offense, but I hope we do figure this thing out soon because I can't afford to buy you a full wardrobe."

"I wish I could be of some assistance in that department."

Sarah pictured him flipping burgers at a fast food joint for extra cash. The image was both humorous and sobering: never could she imagine that becoming his reality but on the other hand if they couldn't get him home, earning a living may very well be in his future. What would he be suitable for? What qualifications did he have?

A light bulb went off in her head "I could get you a job baby-sitting," she managed to say while suppressing bubbles of laughter, "but you have to promise not to turn the kids into goblins. Parents don't take too kindly to that."

Jareth laughed. "I admire your ingenuity, but I was thinking," he said while raising one hand and twisting his wrist, "more along these lines." In a palm that had been empty suddenly sat a twenty dollar bill. Slack-jawed, Sarah took it from him.

It looked real.

It felt real.

It smelled real.

"Is it real?" she asked, looking around to make sure no one noticed their magical display of counterfeiting.

"As real as I can manage."

"How did you know…"

"I watched you pay for gas."

It would be so easy to take the money, head to Saks down the road, and buy Jareth nicer clothes. Even as she considered the idea, though, she realized mentally she had already vetoed it. It was cheating, and that was something she'd never been comfortable with. Before the temptation became too great, Sarah handed him back the bill. "I can't take this from you. It wouldn't be right."

He didn't insist that she use it. He seemed to intuitively understand the reasoning behind her refusal, something that she appreciated. Jareth accepted the money and with another twist of his arm, made it disappear.

"I had to offer," he said simply, as means of an explanation.

"I...ah...appreciate your concern."

Feeling a few shades too formal for a conversation that was taking place next to the clearance rack, Sarah turned to a display of haphazardly folded jeans. If they were in a nicer establishment, she could ask a salesperson for assistance. Unfortunately, they had no such luck, and she had to unravel the mystery of men's sizes before the chaos in the store made her insane.

First things first. "Do you care for anything in particular?"

Jareth was eyeing a display of hideously garish Hawaiin shirts. "Nothing pink. Please."

She grinned. "I'm kind of aiming for the college student look." She grabbed three pairs of Levi jeans and asked Jareth to turn around. He turned, displaying at least five inches of gathered fabric that was bunched at the seat of the too-big jeans he was wearing. A small bow made from her bathrobe belt hung below the ratty hem of his t-shirt. Ignoring these, she held up the first pair of jeans.

"I thought you didn't have any magic."

Jareth shook his head. His ponytail bounced from one shoulder blade to the other. Sarah held up a second pair of jeans in comparison, trying as hard as she could to ignore the fact that her hands were an inch away from the Goblin King's ass.

"There is some. I can feel it. But…it is small, like the flame of a candle when there should be an inferno."

"Interesting analogy," Sarah muttered. Her mind back on the right track, she decided the first pair of jeans would probably work. According to the tag, they were slim through the leg and hip, and Jareth was definitely that. The man had average enough shoulders that tapered down into a slim waist that some women would kill for. But the best part about the jeans was that they were on sale.

"Let's try these on."

Jareth looked around at other shoppers that were near them. "Here?"

"No, in the dressing rooms." She started to lead him back to the changing rooms and then stopped. "Shit. There's…" she dropped her voice, "…_mirrors_ in the dressing rooms. I don't know if we should…you know…" She looked around, talking to herself while she weighed their options. "If we did it quickly, maybe you could change out here."

Jareth turned red and coughed discreetly. "I…_ahem_…am not wearing any…ah…undergarments."

"Maybe _not_," she amended quickly, her face filled with so much blood so quickly she thought her head was going to explode. Was it possible to be this embarrassed and still live? The Goblin King with no underwear. Indeed. "Remind me to get you some while we're here," she said quickly, trying to make herself sound casual. Like buying underwear for a guy was an everyday occurrence.

They walked through the department, both religiously ignoring the fact that he was an untied belt away from flashing the store and that she knew about it.

"So…what other kind of magic can you do?"

Jareth looked thoughtful. He displayed an empty right hand, closed it into a fist, and put it behind his back. Immediately he held up his left hand. In it was a baby lizard, only it was no ordinary lizard: it was bright pink with a red tipped tail.

Never a fan of reptiles, Sarah eyed the creature. "Greeeeeat."

Jareth looked disappointed. "Not really. I was trying to conjure a baby dragon."

Sarah gulped.

Suddenly, a child's cry bugled across the aisle. "Mommy, mommy, lookit the cute lizard! I want a lizard!" It was a tow-headed toddler that was standing up, rather unsafely it looked like, in a shopping cart pushed by a woman with an annoyed expression. He was pointing at the pink lizard in Jareth's hand.

Before Jareth could close his hand the lizard, startled by the boy's shriek, jumped off his palm and scurried across tacky-colored carpet, disappearing into the lingere department.

The mother, seeing nothing, shushed the child and hurried away. Her eyebrows at her hairline, Sarah met Jareth's eyes and in a flash they shared the exact same thought.

_Forget about it._

Smiling stiffly, Sarah picked up a rib knit crew shirt. "Do you like blue?"

"I love blue," he said just as awkwardly. She put it in the cart next to the jeans, and moved on to the next display.

"You know…there's a lot I don't know about you." She picked up a Western button down shirt that was pale green and 50 off. He nodded and she added it to their growing collection.

"There is a lot I do not know about you," he countered amiably.

"You knew enough to come to me for help. That says a lot." She held up a bright red t-shirt. He shook his head and she put it back.

"But I do not know what you do. What you like to eat, what your family is like, what kind of adult you have become."

Her eyebrows met over her nose in a furrow. She was only twenty two, she was still in school, she couldn't even manage her car insurance payments without her parents' help. "Oh, I don't think I've become a grownup just yet."

"I beg to differ," he said with a gleam in his eye. "You are very grown up."

_Change the subject, Sarah, change the flipping subject before you blush so much your head blows up. _

"Well then…how about this? You ask me a question, I ask you a question. Back and forth." She was super impressed she didn't stutter.

"That sounds fair. Would you like to go first?"

"Okay. Ummm…" _What does one ask a Goblin King_? "How old are you?"

"I do not have a specific age that I know of."

"Well…you look like you're in your mid twenties."

"Is that good?"

"Is that your question for me?"

He smiled. "No."

"I figured." She tossed a pair of dark grey dress pants that were also on sale into the cart. "I…guess it's good. It's a moot point though, I know you're not twenty five."

"How do you know?"

"Because…last time I saw you was six years ago and you were…" she grinned wider "…_old_. Even then." Armed with their selections, Sarah led Jareth out of the clothing department and into Accessories.

"You make me feel positively ancient," he remarked, fingering a pair of fuzzy zebra slippers that came complete with a fuzzy black tail that trailed out from the heel. His eyebrow rose but he kept his lips firmly shut.

She grinned at the expression on his face. "You look good for an ancient guy."

"Thank you. My turn. Would it upset you if I asked after Toby?"

Sarah paused in tossing a pack of black socks into the cart. "I…guess not. How much do you remember about him?"

"A good deal. He was a lively fellow. I imagined he had a wonderful destiny ahead of him."

"Right now his destiny involves eating too many cookies and watching Power Rangers. He's six. I don't see him as often as I'd like since I'm at school." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Okay. This does not count toward my official question but I do have to ask. Briefs or boxers?"

The two packages she was holding left no doubt about what she meant. Jareth's cheeks grew slightly pinker than normal as he considered the question and finally compromised on a package of gray boxer briefs.

"You better pray they fit, because I refuse to live through that moment again," Sarah muttered, ignoring the fact that Jareth had a hand to his face and he was trying to work his way through an awesome blush. "How's your leg?"

"Fine." It came out muffled from behind his hand.

"Okay. Back to the official questions. Ludo, Sir Didymus…its been years since I've seen them. How are they?"

Jareth didn't answer her right away, and she stopped pushing the cart to turn and look at him. Just as she started to get worried, he smiled.

"They are as you remember them."

It was something in the way he said it that raised her hackles. Such a comment would have been acceptable by a younger and more naïve Sarah. Luckily she hadn't been that girl in a long time, and could recognize bullshit, even diplomatic bullshit, when she heard it. She pulled him out of the aisle, where they were nominally blocking traffic, and pinned him against a support beam that ran from the tiled floor to the ceiling rafters. Between the pole, the shopping cart, and her, Jareth was trapped, and she wasn't letting him move until he gave her the non-vague answer.

"_What_?" she asked. "Remember, you're supposed to be straight with me. I'm the one that's ensuring you're not traipsing around naked and hungry for the next few days."

Jareth tented long fingers together beneath his elegant chin, his gold-tinged eyebrows drawing together as he carefully considered his words. "I am not lying. Your friends are as you remember them from years ago."

"Well, tell me something that doesn't sound so cryptic. What have they been doing for the last six years?"

Jareth squirmed as much as one can squirm without moving a muscle. "I do not know if you will believe the truth."

"Are they _hurt_? Is Ludo _dead_? _What_?"

"They are not hurt, not dead," Jareth assured her. "But they are…I am…we are not as you are."

"Explain."

He sighed as he tried to ascertain what to say. "To understand the explanation, you will have to listen with the ears of a child. Can you do that?"

"I can try."

"Over the last six years, as you have aged from a teenager into a woman, as you made decisions and revisions that altered your perspective, despite all you have experienced, you have never changed. You have always been you. Always Sarah."

"Of course."

"That is not so with us."

Trying to decipher his riddle-esque responses were starting to hurt her head. But he asked her to listen with an open mind and despite the last five years of a life spent deep in science and logic she was trying very hard to do just that. "So…you are different from me how? What exactly are you, where do you come from?"

Jareth watched her carefully. His gaze was so intense that she dared not look away. The hustle and bustle of the store faded to the background as he spoke.

"Every night my sister rides across the night sky with the moon in her chariot. My brother catches stories in his web that is spun in all the corners of the world. We brought man fire. We gave him wings so that he may fly. When you knocked on wood, we listened. We didn't come from anywhere...we have always been here."

It was too much. "What kind of an answer is that?"

"The only answer I can give I'm afraid," he replied simply.

"So...you're...what? A _legend_? That's _all_ you have to say?"

"There is a reason legends have been passed down from generation to generation. There is a reason that the same stories are told in cultures on opposite sides of the world. The names may change...but we never do."

Sarah struggled to accept his vague explanation and found a very disturbing fact deep inside: that ten years ago she would have believed what he said with no hesitation whatsoever. It was a very sobering thought, to realize in one second just how much she had grown up. She pressed her cold fingers to her mouth; some things, like growing up, were just inevitable. "So...who were you after I left?"

Jareth smiled ruefully. "Very confused."

His honesty threw both of them for a loop. Sarah finally broke the gaze that they'd been maintaining to visually trace the stitching on her purse. She stepped back, her hands gripping the handle of the cart a little too tightly. "About me?" she finally asked.

"About a lot of things," he admitted with a face lowered to the ground. It made it hard for her to read his expression.

She wanted to ask him what, _what_ things was he confused about? He hadn't denied being confused about her and at least it put them on mutual ground because she was sure as shit confused about him. _Everything_ about him confused her. She steeled herself to look at him but when her gaze rose it was caught on something else.

The mirror.

There was a mirror on the support pole that Jareth was leaning against. It was one of those cheap mirrors for customers that were too lazy to go into the dressing rooms. Sarah hadn't noticed it until now because it was one of those details that one normally overlooks.

Until it reflected something it wasn't supposed to.

Like the interior of the throne room at the Goblin Castle.

But that wasn't all.

The reflection in the mirror held different people and different locations, but all was still reflected in perfect balance.

Where Sarah stood on her side on cheap linoleum flooring, facing the mirror's surface, Hoggle stood. He wore a comical expression of surprise that she was sure was identical to the one on her face. Instead of a shopping cart he was clutching a filth-encrusted mop.

And where Jareth stood, his back to the mirror, stood the Man in Black. He was caught in the act of talking to Hoggle and so far completely unaware of the scene that surely must be reflected in the mirror behind him. For if she could see into his world, undoubtedly if he turned he would be able to see into hers.

_That_, however, wasn't the terrifying thing. What froze her heart and the blood in her veins was the way that however Jareth stood, however he shifted his weight on his feet as he tried to think of what he ought to say to her, the way he shrugged his shoulders and wiggled his fingers as a means of distracting himself...

...the Man in Black copied every movement.

Perfectly.

Flawlessly.

As if the two really were mirror images of each other.

From behind it was a perfect match. The hair, though discolored from one man to the next, was the same length and hung in the same pulled back ponytail. The shoulders were the same width, the height was identical.

Sarah's mouth dropped open. Hoggle's mouth was in perfect sync with hers.

Jareth had stopped trying to mumble an explanation about his state of confusion as he finally noticed where her gaze was pointed.

The look of fear on Hoggle's face matched her own as the man on his side of the mirror, the man who- from behind – was Jareth's dark twin, noticed the dwarf's expression just as Jareth had noticed her expression and the two- Jareth & the Man in Black were turning as one, were about to see just what it was she and Hoggle were staring at in the mirror and Sarah could taste her fear, could taste it as if her heart really did leap up into her throat. Hoggle was shaking his head, was too scared to stop the dark King-

There wasn't much room between her and the mirror to work up alot of velocity, but with every ounce of strength she had in her, Sarah rammed the shopping cart into the mirror.

It shattered into an expressionist spiderweb of shards. The pieces stayed in the frame, and Sarah was confronted with fifty distorted Sarahs looking back at her from each individual broken section...

...but at least she was met with Sarahs, and not anything else.

Or any_one_.

Like someone who looked like the Goblin King, moved like the Gobllin King, and knew her like the Goblin King did.

Jareth on her side of the mirror.

A dark Goblin King on the other.

She looked at Jareth with a haunted expression. He was gaping at her as if she had started coughing up goldfish. As a matter of fact, as she looked around, she noticed that everyone else was looking at her too.

Sarah managed a small smile. "I tripped?"


	10. Chapter Nine

It was all Sarah had to say to Jareth, who was looking at her like she'd sprouted a second head. Immediately he understood and remained silent while she apologized to the store manager for the broken mirror. Her deep blush and apologetic commentary lasted all the way through the checkout line. The babble not only sped up their transaction but it kept Sarah's fear of her newfound knowledge at bay. By the time they were done the Super Saver employees looked more annoyed with her nonstop stream of apologies than with the fact that she broke the mirror in the first place. She had no doubt they were glad to see her go.

Boggled down with garishly colored plastic shopping bags, the second they were free from the crowd loitering around the store exit, Jareth turned to her.

"You saw him, didn't you?" he asked quietly.

Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.

"What was he doing?"

She could only stare mutely at Jareth. Knowledge is power, and she finally understood the correlation between bliss and ignorance. Because right now she knew that on one side of the mirror was a dark Goblin King, and on the other was a nice, young, fresh-faced, slightly shabbily dressed Jareth.

One person. Two sides of the mirror. Sarah did not envy Alice or her looking glass.

"Sarah?"

She snapped back to reality. Jareth was standing inches away, peering at her in sincere concern. The look in his eyes took her breath away as another realization slammed home. If the man in black hated her guts, wanted to hurt her…how did Jareth feel? The opposite of light was dark; what was the opposite of hate?

"I'm fine," she heard herself answer woodenly. She dug into one of the bags he held and withdrew a newly purchased roll of duct tape. "We have to cover up every mirror in the car. It's not safe."

Either Jareth didn't notice that she tactfully avoided his question about what the dark king had been doing in the mirror, or else he chose to ignore it while they quickly slapped duct tape over the two side view mirrors and the rearview mirror.

"Driving home is going to be a bitch," she muttered as she got behind the wheel. "How are you feeling?" she asked him.

"A little lightheaded," Jareth admitted.

She glanced at the clock and to her surprise saw that it was two hours past her normal lunchtime. Somehow time had a habit of slipping away in those godforsaken stores.

"I'll make us some lunch as soon as we get home."

As if on cue her stomach growled in response to the prospect of food.

She wanted to talk to him about her theory of good versus evil. She wanted to talk to him about how on earth they were going to get him home. Instead, laden with garish plastic bags containing Jareth's new wardrobe, they made their way into the apartment. Directing him to go change, Sarah handed him the bags containing clothes and made a beeline for the fridge with the other bags, which was starting to look pathetically lacking. Well, thank god the Super Saver was a one stop capitalist trip for all her shopping needs; she started to unload the food purchases she had made. Within no time she had bread, lunch meats, and mass market-ly produced potato salad on the counter.

Sparing all courtesy, she started munching on her own sandwich before automatically starting to make Jareth his.

"How do I look?"

His voice from behind her caught her in mid swallow, and the rye bread and pastrami stayed half chewed in her mouth as she saw him in fitted street clothes for the first time in her life.

No one should look that good. Ever.

She was pretty dead on with sizes, if she had to say so. And she did. His dark jeans hugged his hips, and his button down shirt, though only buttoned with three flimsy standard white buttons and how else would Jareth button his shirt, really? was not too big, not too small, it was…just right.

She had a hard time swallowing.

"Appropriate," Sarah managed, before turning back to his sandwich. A layer of muenster cheese and a hefty dollop of stone ground mustard was added before she handed it to him.

He grinned. It was pretty devastating.

"Thanks."

She wanted to talk to him, needed to talk to him, and yet she only smiled and took a large bite of her sandwich. He did the same, and a silence feel between them that Sarah knew would be broken with serious chewing and eventually a serious discussion about what she had seen.

Until a knock sounded at her door.

Sarah and Jareth froze. The last visitor at her door had not been a pleasant experience.

"Hello?"

Kee's voice.

Sarah looked at him, and without a word, she asked what should she do. Just as wordlessly, he shrugged back.

"Sarah?"

Sarah knew her friend. Avoiding Kee was not an option. Unfortunately, when she opened the door, it was not Kee standing there, but Kee, Alec, and Christian.

Surprised stares were exchanged as the trio registered the non-invalid status of Jareth, perched on the stool and munching on homemade deli.

_Oh fuck_, Sarah thought.

"Hey man, how you feeling?" Christian asked Jareth, who turned to Sarah with his eyebrows upraised ever so slightly.

"Uh…Jareth, this is Christian, Alec, and Kee."

Hellos were exchanged.

"Christian found you after you fell out of the tree yesterday," Sarah said pointedly. Thank goodness Jareth still had enough visible bruises on his face to lend credibility to yesterday's events. She wouldn't think about how quickly they were fading.

"Oh yes. Thank you so much," Jareth said, addressing the younger male. "I would hate to think what could have happened if you had not helped."

"You scared the shit out of us, man," Alec grinned.

And then Christian uttered the worst possible sentence Sarah ever heard.

"Food! I'm starving. Sarah, do you mind? We just got back into town." Without further permission, he proceeded to pile deli meat on the bread she left out. It was only after he started to eat that he added "I mean, if you don't mind." Only it was kind of muffled as his mouth was stuffed, but Sarah got the gist.

Before Sarah could open her mouth, she heard the second worst sentence possible.

"You are not interrupting."

She threw a furious glance at Jareth, who had the grace to look away but enough diplomacy not to blush. Her appetite was disappearing rapidly.

Appetite? What appetite?

Kee and Alec had officially entered the loft. "Are you sure?" Kee asked.

"Of course," Jareth graciously offered. Sarah threw Kee a hopeless glance which was met with more brevity at the situation than she had hoped. Now that there were no severe injuries to worry about, Kee was getting a kick out of this. Great. Her best friend was a sadist.

The two science geeks started making their own sandwiches, and Christian made himself a second. Sarah used the prep work to pull Jareth out of ear shot.

"'Not interrupting?'! Are you insane?" she railed in a whisper. "Remember what I said, '_let me do the talking_?'"

His pale green eyes seemed to blush turquoise. "I am sorry. They are your friends and are merely curious; there is nothing to worry about."

"Nothing? Nothing? Nothing, tra la la?" she bit out crossly, shocking them both into silence until Kee, Christian and Alec had finished loading their plates. They joined them at the kitchen table, and don't think Sarah didn't notice that Kee crowded the table just enough to force Sarah to sit uncomfortable close to Jareth. Uncomfortably close? Yeah right; her arm was brushing against his every time she breathed.

"So did you go to the hospital?" Christian asked Jareth, who had anticipated having to answer by taking a huge bite of his sandwich which forced Sarah to speak on his behalf.

"It wasn't as bad as it looked."

Three heads that obviously didn't buy it swiveled to face Jareth. He smiled with a mouthful of dripping mustard and nodded. He chewed, chewed, chewed, swallowed, and smiled again. "Scrapes and dirt mostly."

"Wow man. I thought you'd been like…mauled by a mountain lion or something."

"Or something," Sarah muttered.

Kee threw her a glance. "It's just incredibly lucky that we were so close. And that Sarah was there."

"Lucky," he agreed solemnly.

"When did you guys get back?" Sarah asked.

"Just now. All our stuff's still in the van outside."

"But we wanted to make sure you were okay before we unpacked and hit the showers," Alec added.

An awkward silence descended after that and Sarah wanted to groan. Because she could sense what was coming at her from around the corner and it was going to hit her like a train filled with dyna-

"So you guys…dated in high school?" Alec asked so casually it was in no way shape or form an innocent question.

-mite.

She and Jareth simultaneously found themselves thoroughly absorbed in chewing their sandwiches.

"Yes," Sarah eventually admitted, telling herself she was blushing only because of the lie, the lie, and nothing but the lie. "High school."

"Did you go to the same school?"

Sarah and Jareth exchanged glances. "No," she said, "he was at a…private school."

"Well it's nice to be able to be friends with your ex," Christian said casually, in such an easy way Sarah knew that, unlike Alec, his _was_ an innocent comment.

Alec turned to Jareth. "Maybe you can fill in some blanks for us on dear Miss Williams. She never talks about the folly of her youth like the rest of us kids."

"Alec," she warned, and was met in response with a charming smile. Suddenly she knew what she had only suspected before: that quiet, intelligent and cute Alec was interested in her.

Great. First Robert and now Alec.

"What?" he teased. "Don't think no one is curious about you."

Perfect.

"Alec, maybe now isn't the time-" Kee tried to interject, but only half-heartedly. One glance at Kee's face told Sarah that the Asian girl was just as curious. It didn't bode well for the direction of the conversation, but in addition it set off disquiet in her mind. These people were her colleagues, they were the only community she'd been a part of for the last five years…and to hear they thought she was distant or that she held some things back made her uneasy.

No one likes to hear they're not who they think they are.

"So Jareth, what _was_ Sarah like when she was a hormonal teenager?" Alec persisted.

She could only flick her eyes in his direction without drawing the inquisitive attention of the others. Her gaze merely skimmed the surface of his but it was enough for her to convey both her discomfort at being shoved into a proverbial corner as well as a wordless warning to keep it simple. If their silent communication had been any clearer it would be called telepathy.

"She was very stubborn," Jareth finally said.

"Well, nothing's changed there," Christian quipped, and Sarah forced herself to join in the light-hearted laughing.

"The TA for our last lab barely finished his thesis lecture before Sarah had whipped out three stat books that contradicted the poor guy," Alec said. "She's the queen of arguing."

"I bet the bio teachers at her high school were terrified of her." Christian meant it as a joke.

"No." The word dropped out of Jareth's mouth before he could stop it. "She wasn't in the science classes then." A simply white lie, a one-syllable 'yes' would have ended the conversation and saved him the trouble of maintaining the cover story that he was Sarah's ex-boyfriend. Yet...he couldn't lie. He was too busy picturing her as the girl she used to be. That girl's story deserved to be told without creative editing.

Sarah, on the other hand, was furious.

He continued anyway, unable to help himself. "She used her imagination in any way she could. Writing, drawing, dancing, acting...her talents were what separated her from the other girls."

"How did you guys meet?"

Jareth didn't let her answer. "It was in a park. I watched her perform a monologue in a white gown. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen."

Sarah was between a rock and a hard place. Rock: being pinned by Jareth's stare during the truth hidden in their fabricated relationship. Hard place: feeling the full weight of her friends' curious glances at learning of this Sarah they'd never known before. She chose to focus on the latter. No, she hadn't been that girl in a long time. Stubborn still, yes. Convinced she was right, always...but now she had facts to back her up. Proof, cold hard evidence that she shot at people as if facts were bullets loaded into an "I'm right" air rifle. It made her incredibly INCREDIBLY uncomfortable not only to endure the curiosity of her friends but to remember the fifteen year old girl sitting in front of her mirror with a tinfoil crown and stars in her eyes.

With a silent and motionless start Sarah realized just how long it had been since she'd thought about that period in her life. All the excuses she made for why it was okay to be so angry and rude, the years she spent believing she was a victim when in reality she was just a spoiled brat…all of it was just embarrassing to scientist Sarah. How difficult and skewed things became when she'd allowed herself to be ruled by her emotions. The tiniest piece of small talk her father or Karen might tentatively offer as a cease fire was an excuse to throw a tantrum.

As vividly as if she'd watched it on a television, Sarah remembered a specific blow up between her and Karen. It was one night; THE night. The night she went into the Labyrinth. She'd returned from the park late and she was whining to Karen about being used as slave labor…and Karen, who'd been doing nothing more than trying to ease the tension and diffuse the fight, told Sarah she'd be okay if she went on a date.

"_I'd like it if you had a date, you should have dates at your age_."

What was meant as an assurance that yes, even stepmothers can be cool and wouldn't mind if their fifteen year old stepdaughters went on dates, Sarah took as an insult. And not just a little one. She'd been mortified and furious – it was an unintentional slap in the face; how could Karen know that boys thought she was weird and didn't look twice at her? That there was nothing on earth she could think of to talk to them about? But at fifteen she didn't have the vocabulary or humility to ask for help; she could do nothing but storm upstairs and retreat into her fantasy world.

Literally.

When she returned from the Labyrinth, her life was much clearer. She had chosen her family over her fantasies. For the first time in a long time she wasn't angry every second of the day. Sarah found that she liked that clarity; she liked not acting solely on emotion but allowing herself to analyze situations from every angle before making a decision based on facts. It was so much simpler, and she embraced the complete orderliness of science with a vengeance that bordered on obsession; blanketing herself in logic quelled any doubt she had about…

She looked sideways at Jareth. His food lay forgotten on his plate and he was looking straight at her.

God…remembering now…

…how bright the stars had seemed when she was fifteen and imagining that one day someone would move them for her.

Science didn't break your heart the way dreams of fairy tale kings did.

_Just fear me love me do as I say and I will be your slave._

Jareth was still looking at her, as still as a statue. Good god, he looked like he heard every thought in her head. Her heart froze.

"So what happened?

"Huh?" she asked, tearing her gaze from the Goblin King at her left.

Alec looked slightly embarrassed at his prying question, but he asked it again anyway. "Sounds like a fairy tale. What went wrong?"

Jareth and Sarah opened their mouths simultaneously and their responses overlapped perfectly.

"He was too controlling."

"She had a lot of growing up to do."

They stared at each other, surprised, shame-faced, and more.

Kee sensed the awkwardness and changed the subject. "That's a total one-eighty from your studies now. When did you get into biology?"

Years of habit allowed Sarah to rein in the stampede of thoughts and emotions enough to focus on what was being asked of her. Sarah mock sighed and shrugged. "After I met him," she said, chucking her thumb casually at Jareth. "Plus a bit of the ol' growing up, not wanting to be a starving artist my whole life, you know."

It was hard not to elaborate but Sarah forced herself to be quiet. The less of the story they knew the less chance they'd trip over their lie.

Jareth, never ceasing to amaze her, seemed to know that her limit had been reached, and he effortlessly turned the conversation to focus on the three students; where they came from, their families, anything and everything that seemed totally trivial. It kept the chatter up until the food was gone and everyone was ready to depart.

"I'm still feeling a bit battered," Jareth said with a mock wince, rubbing his neck. "I think I might need to lie down for a bit."

And that was how Sarah found herself hugging Kee goodbye and closing the door behind her three friends.

Jareth was behind her.

"You handled that very well, if I may say so," he said quietly.

Still facing the door, she nodded slowly. "Yes, I think I did."

Then she pivoted on her right foot and slapped him in the face.


	11. Chapter Ten

_You can thank the 20 inches of snow dumped on central Ohio that closed the salon and buried my car for the impetus to finish a new chapter. :)_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sarah had never slapped anyone in anger before in her life. But after recalling her teenage years, and remembering that she was a whiz at acting on impulse, nothing felt as satisfying or as sure as her palm connecting with Jareth's cheek.

When she was fifteen, the retribution would have been swift; a dunking into the Bog of Eternal Stench, or two lifetimes in an oubliette.

Now, he simply stood there, his hand pressed to his reddened cheek, looking at her in total shock and dismay.

This was exactly what she had expected.

"Wh…why did you do that?"

"Because I could." The coldness in her voice shocked even her.

All the old defiance, all the old stubbornness shone in her eyes like a beacon. It was as close to time travel as she could ever experience; for a brief moment Sarah felt like she was fifteen again. And because she knew he would do nothing, _nothing_! to punish her, she had just enough time to very deliberately _not_ take for granted growing older; she'd wanted to smack him back then too. Only at fifteen she didn't have the guts to do it.

"Wh-what?" he finally managed, retreating to a safe distance. There was something about her posture, hands planted stubbornly on her hips that told him distance was good.

"You've changed," she said quietly, advancing.

Her step forward somehow demanded he back up. "You know I did. Why did you slap me?"

"Come on Jareth," she taunted, using every ounce of arrogance he had once used on her. Every second she had spent spouting lines in the park, to her mirror, at the stars, was used to keep from faltering. "Surely the Goblin King wouldn't allow one of his subjects…one of his _lab rats_ to defy him so."

"What are you talking about?"

"I laid a hand on the King. Reprimand me. Torment me." Sarah kept advancing, he kept backing away. "You want to." She corrected herself. "You wanted to, the last time we met."

"Have you gone insane?" he whispered as she backed him against the wall.

"Insane?" She laughed. In the last twenty four hours, she had been visited upon by a ghost from her past, her world had been turned upside down, and she had just finished listening to Jareth _barely_ fabricate a story to her three comrades about how they had met, and how he had fallen in love with her.

_But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and he had given her special powers. _

It would be a miracle if she retained any sanity at all.

"Do it," she almost ordered him. "Steal my baby brother, set me on a quest, feed me a peach, seduce me, plead with me..." His breath whispered against her lips, but no sound emerged. He was so close. So close. If she was right about him, he wouldn't object to one last step forward, to closing the distance between them-

Sarah stepped back, crossing her arms around herself. "I defied you. What are you going to do about it?"

As if channeling the spirit of the Goblin King she once remembered, Jareth launched himself from the wall and grabbed her arms. She didn't even flinch, she was that sure of herself. Tilting her head up she met the sudden fierceness in his gaze with the same stubborn defiance she had during her stay in the Labyrinth. Only this time she wasn't quaking in barely restrained fear.

One good. One evil. There was no other explanation.

And she was right.

Jareth didn't look angry, he didn't look frustrated by her temper…all he could do was move his gaze from her fiery eyes to her mouth, then back to her eyes. The fact that he wasn't breathing now had less to do with his non-human status and reflected more upon how he felt being this close to Sarah.

She stepped back. She smiled. All traces of impudence and aggressiveness were gone.

"See?" she said gently.

Jareth was so shocked that he had to move back and lean against the wall for support.

"See what?"

"You."

Sarah took his hand and led him to the couch. When she sat down, he moved away from her. She took it in stride and began to talk.

The entire scene fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. Listening to her, even Jareth had to admit that.

Jareth's different face. Jareth's grateful attitude. The man in black, and the murderous hatred that lived in him. Jareth's missing memories. The loss of magic. His mysterious attacker. Their identical movements in the mirror.

As Sarah kept explaining her theory, part of Jareth went inside himself, to a deep cavern where he kept his inner most thoughts. He knew…_knew_, that at one point in time his need with her was dual natured; he moved the stars for her and yet he wanted…_needed _her to submit to him. Now…all that existed in him was Sarah. Her smile, her graciousness, kindness, and unerring beauty. How _proud_ he was of her, of the woman she had become. How humble he was that after everything he had put her through, she was still willing to help him.

If a psychologist had gotten a one on one session with the Goblin King a few years ago, they would have discovered that when it came to Sarah, Jareth used to have the temperament of a two year old. He wanted something when he wanted it, and how dare anyone say no.

He wanted her, and he had known how to get her. Oh, he could run a good game; he could read her mind as easily as flipping open a book on the shelf. Sarah had wanted a prince on horseback, had wanted to be swept of her feet by a magical king, had wanted…_needed_, to be as special as she thought she was. Needed an escape. He played that part for her, and thought it was a means to an end. _She_ wanted what she wanted, and _he_ had wanted her. What he said to Kee and the others was the truth. Sarah was the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on…but that didn't suddenly mean that he could have what he wanted…not without a little manipulation and a lot of calculation.

Yes, he remembered that he had been perfectly capable of putting his heart's desire through hell. She had wanted to feel special, after all. And hadn't he taken care of that?

Could he do that to her now, if she asked him to?

No.

Never.

_She was right._

"Two of us?" he asked, finally finding his voice.

"You…split into two parts. One good…"

"…and one evil," he finished for her.

Sarah nodded. He had taken her explanation as quietly as a first year student. "And then…there's this." She padded to her laundry bin and picked out her pair of gray cords. She had almost forgotten about it. Fishing it out of the pocket, she returned to the couch with the torn leather dangling through her fingers. Wordlessly she held out her hand.

Jareth took the damaged ornament from her in wonder. "My pendant."

"Half of it."

He ran his fingertip over the scorched ridges in silence.

"Right?" she asked. "I mean…I don't remember it exactly but there was more to it. Am I right?"

He nodded, never taking his eyes from the jewelry. "You are correct. Its broken…in half."

_This_ was why she got involved in science. There was as much power in connecting the dots on a biological mystery as there was in saying new words as a made-up character. Facts. She had her theory now…she just had to figure out how to finish the experiment.

Her eyes were alight with her discovery. "Do you see? Does it…feel right?"

Finally Jareth allowed himself to look at her. There was so much in his gaze she couldn't identify that it made the breath click in her throat.

"It would seem…that you are onto something."

When he said nothing else, Sarah allowed herself to settle back against the couch. Its overstuffed pillows supported her in a plushy embrace. This was right, she felt it was right.

"Okay…" she worked best when thinking out loud. "So somehow the King of the Goblins has been split into two people. There's the man in black, who is still confined to the Labyrinth. He's absolutely evil. Then there's you, who seems to be stuck in the real world for the time being. You're everything that was good about the Goblin King." Sarah allowed herself to picture the full King from years ago, and snorted. "Not that I remember much good about you back then."

He looked at her sharply. Hair that had escaped the rubber band hung softly around his face.

Sarah shrugged. "Point of order: back then I wasn't noticing anything positive about anyone. Especially you." Shaking her head, her eyes settled back on the poster of Pollack that seemed to help her think. "We can see him in the mirrors…and I'm certain he can see us too. So no mirrors until we can think this thing through."

"Do not forget…we dreamt about him last night."

Sarah rolled her head on the cushion and stared at Jareth. "Was it real?"

Jareth sunk back against the pillows himself. "It_ felt_ real. He looked the same when he attacked me, which matched your description. Yellow eyes. Dressed all in black." He turned his head to look at her. "I am quite sure he wanted to kill me."

He sounded so lost that her feminine instincts were kicking in with a vengeance; she wanted to comfort him. Now that her theory was pretty much proved, she knew she could, that this Jareth would not rebuke her.

The other Jareth hated her. It was only simple logic to assume that this one…

No!

Sarah shook her head. "Same here." She sighed, eyes back on Pollack. "Will we see him tonight as well?" she mused, biting her lip before answering her own question. "Of course we will." Gaze on Jareth again. "Can you protect us against that?"

He averted his gaze. She didn't notice. "I will see what I can come up with."

"So…you split while you were still in the Labyrinth. Since I can't even imagine having two Goblin Kings duking it out in my world…I think we should proceed on the basis of getting you back home before we deal with the evil you. You said you told Hoggle you'd contact him again in seventy two…no, now sixty hours from now. So we have a little over two days to figure this out."

"How do you suggest we deal with him?"

That made Sarah sit up.

"Kill him? Try to…rejoin with him?" Jareth continued, almost to himself.

He was silent after that for so long that Sarah had to say something. "If you kill him…will you die as well?" Was this a Nightmare on Elm Street type thing, where if you died in your dreams you died for real? A twin kind of thing, where he would feel the pain as the man in black died? Was it a fairy tale thing, where everything would end up happily ever after?

She immediately dismissed that last thought. She was old enough to know better.

"Sarah…I do not know."

They both leaned back into the couch as one. Silence reigned supreme for a few minutes, except for the drumming of her fingers on the couch's arm. There was too much to sort through. It had been a long fucking twenty four hours. And her nerves were wound as tight as an over tuned guitar. Finally, she heaved a large sigh and pushed herself off the couch.

Proclaiming "I need a drink," she dove into the kitchen cabinets for two glasses and a corkscrew. "Red or white?"

His raised eyebrows were answer enough.

"Red it is," she said, and poured each of them a large glass before returning to the couch. She handed him a wineglass, which he held up to the light quizzically, inspecting the liquid inside.

"Just trust me." She held up her glass. "A toast. To breakthroughs."

He held up his own. "To answers." They clinked glasses. It was most definitely NOT lost on her that his eyes were staring at her from over the rim of his glass.

"I need a notepad." She set her glass down and rummaged through the desk for some paper and a pen. Once situated back on the couch, she started making a list of everything she had been musing about.

Jareth noted what she was writing and took a sip of his wine. "This is very good." He swirled the wine in the glass.

"Mmm," she agreed, focused on the list.

Jareth remained in silence for a few minutes before the question that had been burning in his mind fell out of his mouth. "Did you…really not notice anything good about me?"

Sarah looked up, surprised.

"Years ago, I mean," he continued.

"Are you serious?" He didn't answer her. "You want to talk about this _now_?"

He was torn. If she was right, and everything she said led him to believe that yes, she was…then now was really the only time he would be able to have a discussion like this with her. And if his time was limited…

…now that they had an understanding of the situation, he could place a reason behind what he had been feeling inside. Namely, he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in her for as long as he could. But he couldn't use Sarah like that, and then leave. So the next best thing in his mind was…sitting here on the couch with her. Enjoying his time. No matter what happened, whether he was killed, eaten, tortured, destroyed, or rejoined with his darker half, he desperately wanted these moments…on the couch…with her. Hearing her opinions of him…maybe that would help face his darker side, help him learn his strengths, so he told her so.

"I don't know how it could help."

"Indulge me?" he begged quietly.

Sarah sighed and frowned. Pouring herself another glass gave her a moment to think.

"The good things about you…" she blew a long breath out of pursed lips that were starting to become stained purple with wine. Well, for starters, he was the most handsome being she ever laid eyes on, but that wasn't a part of being good or evil, it just was. Plus she wasn't going to tell him something like that while they were forced to share a bathroom, so she mentally moved on.

"Well…you gave me a _chance_ to get my brother back. You didn't have to. You could have just kept him. That was nice." She thought more. "You took good care of Toby."

"He was delightful."

Sarah smiled as she thought of her half-brother. "He still is. Hm…what else…well…it wasn't necessarily good and it wasn't bad but you seemed…lonely."

That threw Jareth for a loop. Wise old Sarah. How perceptive she was.

Too perceptive.

"When…when we danced at the ball," she began shyly, running a finger around the rim of the glass, "I knew you were trying to stop me from reaching the Castle, but…" she trailed off.

"But what?"

It was only the wine in her system that allowed her to continue. "When we danced, you looked…happy. And not just because you were winning…was I just a dumb kid or…" No amount of wine would let her continue that thought, especially after Jareth simply stared at her, silent. "Never mind, it's not important," she said, picking up the wine and pouring more into her glass.

His hand withdrew from its nest in the couch cushions and softly encircled her wrist. She froze as his thumb made a back and forth path over the top of her palm.

No, no, no, no!

Well, maybe.

Fueled by her discovery, by seven years of pent up passion, and by half a bottle of wine, Sarah was the first one to start leaning across the couch. It was only a foot or so, _definitely_ less than twenty four inches, but it felt like she was crossing an ocean. He was frozen in ice; Jareth let her get so close that she could see the peach fuzz on his cheeks, and the vein running down his neck pulsing in time with his heart. His eyes, so alien yet familiar, stared without blinking at her.

Sarah had been sure all evening but she wasn't sure about this, not at all, so she gave him plenty of time to say no.

She closed her eyes (_like all the princesses did when they were putting the moves on their prince valiant_), but as her breath whispered against his lips, he turned his head. Her mouth grazed his jaw, his hair, and her gasp of embarrassment was blown directly into his ear.

Calmly, like an adult, she moved back to her side of the couch and smoothed her skirt down. "I'm sorry."

Jareth shook his head as if clearing it. "It is not you. I just…I cannot."

Sarah nodded, and coughed discreetly. "That was the other nice thing about you back then. You were a gentleman back then too."

The harsh warbling of the old fashioned telephone allowed her to launch herself off the couch, as well as hide the horrible scarlet blush that was fusing its way up her body.

"Hello?"

It was Roger. "I just saw Kee." His voice was so cold that she had no doubt Kee spilled the beans.

"Roger, I can explain…"

He cut her off. "Explain? Explain how a comatose man with severe blood loss was chatting it up over lunch?"

Sarah slammed her hand down on the kitchen counter and cursed silently. Jareth rose from the couch and moved to her side, their awkwardness from seconds ago forgotten for the moment.

"I told you he was in trouble."

"Sarah, there is a difference between being in trouble and not even limping _less than a day after I put fifty stitches in his leg_! Now what the _fuck_ is going on?!"

Jareth touched her arm and, unthinking, she pushed him away, scowling. "Roger…I'd tell you if I could, but I can't."

"Sarah, I went out on a line for you. I _jeopardized_ my _fellowship_; if anyone found out what I did I would be _expelled_."

She had never heard such anger or betrayal aimed at her before. "No one will find out, Roger, I promise."

"Why didn't you take him to a hospital, huh? Is he a criminal?"

She couldn't keep the brief shocked laughter out of her voice. "Wh-what? No!"

"Would you tell me if he was?"

Sarah was breaking apart at the seams. "Roger…of course I would."

His snort told her everything she needed to know about her credibility rate with him. "I'm done. If he's doing so well on his own he doesn't need to see me again, right?"

"He'll be fine, thanks to you, I swear Roger…but it's complicated," she pleaded. Her knuckles were white around the receiver.

"It always is. Next time you need help…look somewhere else. Good-bye Sarah."

"Roger? Roger?"

The dial tone sounded in her ear. When she was positive the loud buzzing wasn't going to transform back into Roger's voice, she hung up the phone slowly. Everything was numb. Roger was one of the first people she had befriended at university. They'd been study partners in Chem and he'd be on her wavelength: unflagging. Meticulous. Cursed with a crush on her, but he'd never let it interfere with their academic or social relationship.

…she'd be lucky if he ever spoke to her again.

'Sarah?"

When she turned Jareth was right behind her, looking at her with grave concern.

"Is everything all right?"

Despite putting the moves on him only minutes ago, all she could see Jareth as right now was a complication on her nice, orderly life. She was lying to her colleagues, her personal space was invaded, and now her best friends didn't trust her. All because of him.

"No. It's not," she said in full composure of herself in every measure save one: tears were leaking out of her eyes. She swiped her palms across her cheeks jerkily and strode past him into her bedroom. "Leave me alone." Those three words were all she could manage; if anything else slipped out of her lips it would most likely be something she would regret.

Sarah shut the French doors firmly behind, locking them tight.


	12. Chapter Eleven

Despite her breakthrough on solving the problem of the Goblin King, Sarah felt her life unraveling. She was lying to her friends; she was losing her friends, and all to protect who? A figment of her childhood imagination?

He was real, that was a given; he was getting noticed by science students and teenage girls alike. But was he real like she was real? She was putting her life on the line for what, a legend? A myth? What's the worst thing that would happen if she kicked him out of her apartment right now and demanded that she never see him again? It's not as if her life would be affected. There was still plenty of time to foist the blame for her odd behavior onto him and try to salvage what remained of her reputation.

She flopped onto the bed, groaning. She can't believe she actually tried to kiss him! In retrospect it seemed so stupid but at the moment, in the moment it seemed like the only possible recourse. Dammit, he even agreed with her; one evil king and one good, split into halves of the same whole. He agreed!_ He agreed!_

She rolled onto her back, her blush subsiding but tears leaking a path down her cheeks. He agreed with her theory. It was a pathetic excuse for something that was a projection of her romantic thoughts onto the situation.

_No!_ The way he looked at her her thighs tightened just thinking about what lay behind those jade depths and Sarah shifted onto her side.

_Yes!_ She was being selfish. Just because the opportunity to fulfill her teenage fantasies was dropped into her lap didn't mean he was on the same wavelength. She couldn't even begin to assume she knew what he was thinking.

But she _was_ assuming her theory of his situation was correct.

Staring at the dark ceiling, Sarah uttered a short laugh through her tears before biting a pillow lest that laugh turn into sobs.

He was turning her world upside down and this time she hadn't even asked him to.

She had no idea how much time passed as she stared out the dark window at the darkening sky. Enough for the brilliant light of sunset to fade from the cool hues of dusk to the pearly illumination of the moon. Enough for the stars to peek out from behind night's canopy of darkness.

Her mind was racing too hard for sleep to take over. At some point during the transition of time Sarah got up to exchange her skirt and cardigan for a worn tank top as soft as cashmere and a pair of flannel pajama pants. It was what she would have worn if there was not a good and kind half-of-a-goblin-king roaming around her apartment, and she wasn't about to make anymore concessions because of his presence.

Back in bed, curled into a fetal position and staring out the window, Sarah brooded. The worst thing about taking action and being wrong was that it threw into doubt everything else she felt so sure about. It wasn't just the humility of rejection; it was knowing that there was more to the tale that kept her from saying the words that would banish Jareth from her meager circle of protection.

Hoggle.

Ludo.

Sir Didymus.

If Jareth was real enough to be sitting in her living room watching Roseanne, judging by the theme music, then her friends were also real enough to be trapped in the Labyrinth with a sadistic psychopath dictating their every move. The same instinct that propelled her to help Jareth when he dropped out of the sky drove her to bear the responsibility of the creatures that helped her become who she was today.

Who was she? What is someone but the beliefs by which they live their life, the sum total of their experiences?

Despite the underlying suspicion that her identity crisis was nothing but selfish in the face of Jareth's current problems, Sarah couldn't stop walking through the memories that helped her define the person she was today. What did she know about herself to be true, now that her past was not only haunting her, but taking up residence on her couch?

Any attempt to tell her that she was incorrect only drove her to prove that she was unerringly right.

Her first instinct with frustrating situations was to fume that it wasn't fair, even if she had finally learned to keep her mouth shut about how she felt. Growing older and wiser was great, but she still had a long way to go and she knew it.

There was nothing like a circle of friends that she needed, and that needed her.

Such thoughts of her personality led right down the path of scrutinizing previous relationships. Which drew forth another laugh as she continued through the sticky ivy trails of that particular road. What relationships? Her latest, Gary, who she kept at a distance for what she now saw as a good reason? Her one high school boyfriend, whom was more like a confidant, an older brother figure that presented no threat to her heart? Or the ones in the middle, some of whom pursued her until she was too tired to say no, the others who were deemed convenient due to his-and-hers dual passions for academia?

Or was it because they were all cursed with having to live up to a fairy tale king that stepped into her life with beauty, promise, and malicious glee?

Her eyebrows furrowed; the first facial movement besides tears in a long while. At the very best moment together, the Jareth she remembered had an agenda that involved treachery specifically against her. Is that the whither and the whyfore of how she picked her relationships; usually passionless ones so as not to disturb memories of who she chose not to choose?

But, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

A soft knocking on the glass panes of the French doors drew Sarah out of her reverie. Full night had set in and the room was only barely visible through the glow of the moon.

There was no doubt in her mind as to who it was.

"What do you want?"

"I need to talk to you," came his soft reply.

Blowing out frustration on a deep breath, Sarah hastily wiped her face with the back of her hand. "Come in.'

The latch clicked and with the lamplight in the main room, Jareth was silhouetted in the door frame in all his lean-hipped, spiky haired glory. Sarah steadfastly remained unmoved.

"What?" It came out harsher than she intended.

Jareth seemed to feel safer staying in the doorway. Which was good; if he came in and closed the doors behind him she would be alone in the dark with him and she was pretty sure she was too mentally fried to handle that.

"Were you sleeping?"

"No. Just thinking."

Her eyes still unadjusted to the lamplight, all she caught was the shadow of spiky hair bobbing up and down as he agreed with her.

"We should talk about our mutual nightmares."

That thought hadn't even crossed her mind. She stretched over and the soft glow of a stained glass cut lampshade filled the room. "What do you mean?"

"I do not think you will believe me. It would be better to show you." He entered the room, his eyes strangely grave. Sitting gently on the bed as far from her as he could get, he held out his hand. With a twist of his wrist, a crystal sat perched on his fingertips.

"So?" Sarah asked.

"Watch." With a little encouragement, the sphere rose into the air. It floated away from them and hovered for a minute before popping like a soap bubbles, sending a few glittery sparkles onto the blankets.

Sarah looked at him, not understanding the significance.

"This is both good news and bad news. Earlier I tried to form a crystal, and it would not hold form once it left my hand. Then, I tried to do it again while holding this." Jareth drew the broken pendant from beneath his shirt. The leather tie had been repaired by knotting the torn ends together. "I was able to sustain my magic longer. I think I have the ability to protect our dreams."

"But that's good news," Sarah said. "How bad can the bad news be?"

Jareth coughed and looked away.

"What?" she insisted. She didn't like the feeling that was growing in her stomach, it felt too much like a rotten apple refusing to be digested.

"Unfortunately, my power is still somewhat lacking."

In the stillness of the room, Jareth was actually was he blushing? He was embarrassed?

"It's okay," she reassured him.

"That is not it." Jareth cleared his throat, but still couldn't look her in the eye. "It would seem that the spell I could cast has certain proximity factors."

Still fighting off her blush, Sarah didn't understand. When his eyes finally darted to her face, he noted her confusion and ran his hand nervously over his face.

"For my protection to work, we would have to be close."

A lightbulb went off in her brain. "You mean sleep together?"

"Yes."

"In the bed?" she gasped.

Jareth nodded.

_"No."_

"Sarah-"

No matter how much she loved hearing his lilting accent speak her name, this was too much. She cut him off.

"No. No no no no absolutely not." To emphasize her point she gathered the blankets and pillows around her until she was in a chenille cocoon with nothing left over for him. "You sleep on the couch."

"It is too far away. I cannot protect you."

"Protect this, pal." She threw a pillow at him. "I have had just about all I can take from you tonight. Frankly, I don't care if the Goblin King arrives in my dreams riding on the back of King Kong, you are not sleeping in this bed while I am in it."

"I will sleep on the floor."

Sarah was too far gone in a tantrum to see the rationality in that option. "Get._ Out."_

"Sarah-"

"Forget it!" she shrilled. She'd already embarrassed herself once with him, misreading that look in his eyes. She was not about to give him another chance to make a fool of her. Well, technically, he was the good Goblin King; it wasn't in him to make anyone feel like a fool. She did that to herself was doing it to herself right now, acting like a fifteen year old again. What was it about out of control hormones that blocked the tones of reason from filtering through? "Just leave me alone."

In a huff, she turned away from him, curling into a ball in her blanketed shelter. She felt his presence for a couple of minutes, could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he tried to come up with something, anything, to win her over. Eventually, the mattress shifted as he stood up, and she heard the French doors latch softly behind him.

She was alone.

Her anger served up with a side of mortification took awhile to settle down. The lights in the living room were off by that time, and clouds had obscured the moon and stars from her view. As she realized just how dark it was, she had the barest inkling of the tiniest fraction of doubt creep into her head. Maybe he was right.

Of course that thought was obliterated by a tidal wave of recently stirred up pride and arrogance. It kept her chained to the bed as if there were real links of iron holding her down.

She had to save face. Needed to. Besides, forewarned was well prepared. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad now that she knew who what she was facing. Maybe she wouldn't even dream of the man in black at all.

It was a long time before Sarah fell asleep. But she still, eventually, did fall asleep.

* * *

Someone entered the room and stood over her. Sarah knew it, could almost see the man-shape despite her eyes being closed.

Open.

Open your eyes, she commanded herself.

The mattress shifted as someone first sat down, and then slid beneath the covers.

Fingers ran through her hair gently. Still unable to pull herself from the soft dreaming state, Sarah wanted to struggle against the touch, but found herself arching into it. She turned to the form next to her in bed.

"Jareth?" she murmured.

"Shhhhh," he whispered.

She could see him and not see him. How could she see through closed lids? She could. But only flashes of sight; his long hair loose and spilling into his eyes. The pale smooth skin of his shoulder. A flash of green jade above a high cheekbone as he bent to kiss her.

_Oh yes,_ she thought.

He was above her, braced on his elbows, kissing her slowly at first. Like her sight, her sense of touch was coming in random flickers; his mouth on hers, then brushing her throat, his hand caressing her jaw one second and clutching at her hip the next.

_Oh yes, please_.

Being with Jareth made her feel as light as air.

Like she was floating.

Like she was falling.

Falling

She was falling through the softness of the blankets and bed. Sarah opened her eyes in dismay.

She was drifting slowly downward through the night sky. With her gasp, the stars around her were blown out like candles. Below her was a rumbling, a massive range filled with thick black clouds that were illuminated with bursts of thunder. She passed through them, feeling them and not feeling them. The wispy traces of the clouds stayed with her as she passed through them to touch down on the ground.

Sarah landed on a giant checkerboard in a simple white shift made of the softest silk and chiffon ever known; it was like wearing morning mist. It undulated around her in ripples of smoke as the wind blew leaves of violet and gusts of glitter over the game field. It played with her hair, which hung down her back in soft curls intertwined with silver vines..

Jareth?

Did she dream him? Was she dreaming now?

"Hello?" she called to the night sky.

A stone was rolling toward her across the black and white tiles. It stopped in front of her bare feet. She couldn't help but think of Ludo, and scanned the horizon for him.

Nothing.

Sarah bent to pick up the stone.

The second she did, the board on which she stood erupted into life. Sarah threw herself to the ground as explosions of white glitter and black dust clouded her vision.

Before it had even cleared, she knew that she was no longer alone.

She rose on shaky legs to face whatever had joined her.

Surrounding her, on coordinating tiles, were life-size chess pieces. Directly next to her stood a statue of Jareth, looking glorious in a blue cravat and white waistcoat. She reached up to touch his lips that she had just kissed; they were stone. But they had been on her body, she could feel them on her skin as if it were still happening. What was real?

Then came Hoggle looking fine and proud and standing as tall as a dwarf could. Sir Didymus and Ambrosious in full battle regalia. Ludo was at the end holding a baton topped with an intricate stone carving. And in front of her, in a wave of first defense, were various creatures of the Labyrinth.

Pawns.

Suddenly it became clear. She double checked where she was standing; it was to Jareth's right.

She was the White Queen.

"Marvelous pieces, wouldn't you say?"

Sarah gasped and actually jumped behind the stone Jareth, as if he could offer any protection against the man attached to that deadly voice.

The Goblin King, once again clad head to toe in a black so impossibly black it hurt the eyes, was strolling casually across the chess board. A crown of midnight thorns sat atop his head. His yellow eyes never left her and there was something so vile in that gaze that Sarah actually felt soiled.

Be calm. Be strong. You know what he is now, and knowledge is power.

Just wake up.

"Where are my friends?" She tried to keep the waver out of her voice and failed.

The Goblin King made a sympathetic noise. "Sarah. Always so noble. First her brother and now her friends."

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Why Sarah." He hissed her name like an obscenity. "I want you." He kept advancing, and she tried to keep at least one stone chess piece between him and her while still looking casual about it.

"Why me?"

This stopped him. He regarded her with poisonous eyes from behind filthy hair. "You are the girl who ate the peach. You forgot everything."

Sarah nodded. One hand was behind her back, madly pinching her arm. Wake up!

"You will tell me how you remembered. You will tell me and you will help me remember. You know. You know what is happening to me. You know why I can't remember."

She stopped behind a limestone carving of the old man with the talking hat. "What do you need to remember?" Keep him talking, remember everything he says. He is the other half to this mystery.

"EVERYTHING!" he shrieked, and pulled his arm back. He ran his fist through the smiling face of a Fiery. It exploded in a shower of dust and blood and Sarah screamed. She turned on her heel and ran; only in her panic, she ran straight into the opposing team's side of the board.

His side.

Goblin pawns swarmed her, their claws tearing her dress to shreds, clutching at her hair, attempting to drag her down to the ground. All she could hear was her screaming and the Goblin King's maniacal laughter. She fought off the Goblins only to be faced with an even more horrifying sight.

Mimicking the white side of the board, all her friends were the chess pieces, only horribly altered.

Gasping for breath on tiny screams, Sarah saw Ludo trussed up and bristling with a dozen spears impaled in his orange fur. Sir Didymus slumped over an emaciated Ambrosious like a fox stole. Worst of all was Hoggle, beheaded. His body was holding the head, which was frozen in a scream.

The Goblin King stood in the space reserved for the King, grinning wickedly. And next to him

next to him

There was no statue next to him; it was a real person. Sarah was mesmerized by the sight of herself standing next to the Goblin King. It was herself as she had never been.

This version of herself was the Black Queen. The eyes were lifeless and ringed thickly with kohl. A cruel half smile the color of blood was plastered on an alabaster face that hadn't seen the light of day in countless years. Black hair was pulled severely back into a high ponytail that was so long it brushed the ground. A scarlet red collar made of glittering rubies held her neck up to a ridiculously severe angle while a strapless black leather dress hugged every curve.

As she watched in horror, the Goblin King drew himself behind his queen and slipped his arms around her waist. The dark Sarah's eyes and body flinched but the smile never slipped from her face. His head dipped down and a black and swollen tongue started to slide along a white shoulder.

"Be mine." It wasn't a question.

Unable to produce words, Sarah shook her head back and forth. "I can help you. Don't you want everything to be like you remembered?"

"Where is the other one that dares call himself Goblin King?"

Sarah didn't answer him. Didn't know how to answer him.

Suddenly, viciously, the Goblin King opened his mouth and savagely bit his Queen's bare shoulder. Both Sarah's cried out in pain, and blood flowed from dual bite marks; one on the Queen's left shoulder and one on Sarah's right.

Mirror images.

"Be mine," he commanded, running the tips of his pointed teeth along the Queen's other shoulder.

Clutching her bleeding shoulder, Sarah shook her head. She closed her eyes, preparing for another bite. Instead she felt his arms suddenly around her waist and his hot breath in her ear. She opened her eyes and gasped; she was staring at a statue of herself as the White Queen. She tried to move her head but the heavy collar of rubies prevented it. She started hyperventilating and the tight leather corset that was cinched around her ribcage accelerated the panic.

His cold, greasy tongue slid along her shoulder and Sarah cried out, tears streaming from her eyes. She dug deep into the well of her strength and found it almost dry.

"Something has happened," she sobbed. "You're not the Goblin King, and neither is Jareth."

This stopped her assault. The unseen tongue withdrew, but the hard hands tightened around her waist.

"Please, listen to me," she begged through tears. "Something happened to divide the real Goblin King-"

"I AM THE GOBLIN KING," he bellowed, and wrenched her around.

It was a thousand times worse than she had ever imagined, being face to face with the evil King. His cheekbones had elongated until they were spikes bristling out from his face, and his eyes were the ancient yellow of long dead corpses. His lips wrenched back from blackened gums as he hissed at her howling countenance.

She couldn't keep the screams from pealing forth like a fire bell as she felt him fumbling with the skirt of her dressing, ripping and pulling until he finally had what he wanted, had her in the worst way possible, and she was helpless to do anything.

With bared teeth, he descended.

As Sarah screamed and thrashed in bed, Jareth grasped her shoulders, trying to pin her down before her flailing arms collided with anything else besides the lamp and picture frame she already sent shattered to the floor. Her eyes were wide and glazed over with panic; he knew without knowing that she was not seeing him, she was seeing some imagined horror.

Loathe doing so; he shook her, all the while calling her name. Nothing was helping, and overwhelmed with helpless panic himself, he grabbed the only remaining object on the night table, his glass of water from the previous evening, and doused her with it.

This time her scream was more outrage than fear, and she stopped struggling. Her eyes cleared and she finally registered his presence.

When Jareth awoke to find her screaming, blood pouring out of one smooth shoulder, his only thought was to wake her up, save her, protect her much as he had at the start of yesterday. It never crossed his mind that jumping onto the bed with her dressed as he was, in the simple sleep shorts they purchased earlier, and pouring water on her head might exacerbate their earlier argument.

It also never crossed his mind that Sarah would wrap herself around him like a vine of ivy and sob hysterically, drenched shirt and all. All he could do was sit on the bed with his back uncomfortably digging into the carved headboard, one hand stemmin the flow of blood and soothing it with a healing spell, the other stroking her head softly and murmuring nonsensical words of comfort as Sarah cried and cried in his arms.


	13. Chapter Twelve

He had been good enough to offer her a chance to win her brother back, even though he taunted her the whole way. She was good enough to not be swayed from finding Toby, even though she wanted Jareth. Good and evil, light and darkness, choosing wisely or poorly all were possible in everyone even the Goblin King. Until now.

The first thing Sarah saw when she opened her eyes was Jareth's sleeping face.

From three inches away.

She was not disoriented from sleep, and she was not shocked.

She knew who he was. The good and kind half of the Goblin King.

She knew why he had come to her last night. He woke her up from the most bone-shattering nightmare ever dreamt just seconds before his evil half could do something unspeakable.

And she knew why he was still here. While she was sobbing hysterically, she made him promise not to leave her.

So Jareth stayed with her. He held her in his arms, he stroked her hair, and he tempered her panic with the sleep spell she had been so adamant she didn't need. Around four am she finally drifted off with her cheek against his bare chest, lulled back to sleep by the beating of his heart.

Sarah didn't stir an inch. Nothing, not the man in black, not the early traces of sunrise, not even a nuclear explosion could make her want to move.

It happened. Despite everything he put her through years ago, despite the sudden intrusion two days ago, despite frustration and anger and fear, she somehow fell in love with him.

Wanting him that had been instantaneous from the second he offered her a chance to win her brother back. Standing together on the hill overlooking the Labyrinth, she was aware of him in a way she had never been aware of a male before; torn between knowing she had to find her brother and It doesn't look that far.  
It's further than you think.

and her body tightening in new places and wondering if he knew what to do about it. Moving behind her when she hadn't expected him to, hearing that voice spoken directly into her ear, she had still been too much of a child to do anything but blush.

In her head though First he treated her as a child, inviting her to play with costumes and toys, and later later, when he re evaluated his opinion of her, he knew what she really wanted. So he tempted her with what she really wanted She could admit she wanted him from the beginning but loving him? When had that happened?  
When everything about him that caused her to wish she could hate him but somehow not quite make it showed up on her doorstep in a smiling body with jade eyes.

It was not going to last forever. It might not even last through tomorrow. There was no future for them, not with the man in black tyrannizing the Labyrinth. Sarah didn't know how to deal with the evil King, or what would happen to Jareth if they figured out what to do. Her heart was going to break no matter what the outcome; she was old enough to know a happy ending was highly unlikely.

A broken heart versus a lifetime of wondering what if.

Sarah knew what her choice was.

Slowly, so slowly that she didn't disturb Jareth, she closed the infinitesimal distance between them. She could kiss him if she wanted to, she could feel his breath against her lips.

She held her breath until her heart and her lungs were bursting, but still she hovered above his mouth.

No. She really wanted to feel his hand in hers, look into his eyes.

Sarah retreated as slowly as she had advanced.

For this very second, this moment of lying belly to belly in Jareth's arms, of being able to study at close range his lips, his eyelashes, his patrician nose, even his ears she was going to drink in every second, every moment.  
Eventually, Sarah closed her eyes. Even more eventually, her breathing evened out and she fell asleep with a small smile on her face.

* * *

Jareth was surprised that Sarah didn't hear his heart pounding the closer she got to him. It felt like a Fiery was trying to claw its way out of his chest, it rang in his ears like the usual cacophony of his throne room stuffed to the brim with goblins. How could she not hear it?

He awoke the moment Sarah's breathing changed from the deep rhythm of slumber to the slightly more staccato pattern of waking up next to someone surprising. All night long he kept himself in the hazy limbo between sleep and awake so he could be prepared to protect her.

Protect her at all costs.

That stunning shining moment when the world stops turning upside down, when everything becomes as still and clear as a photograph, fell upon him the night before, sitting next to her on the couch.

He had to go. He had to find a way to get back and sooner than he intended, because if he didn't, he was going to lose his willpower and choose Sarah over the Underground. If he felt her fall asleep in his arms one more time, he was going to forget about the evil that was running rampant and lose himself in the smell and feel of her.

He wanted it so bad he could almost believe it could happen, and that was absolutely unacceptable.  
He remembered enough about his whole self to know he wouldn't have hesitated to open his eyes and kiss her as she battled her own feelings. The true goblin king would not wait for her to come to him, he would take what he wanted. Lying there, feeling the whisper of her against his cheek, his mouth, and unable to do anything, unable to lead even himself through a simple kiss, he knew in one clear shining moment what had to be done.

He was not a ruler in his current state. He was too sensitive. Too meek. Someone with those traits would not be able to rule the Underground. His aggressive side was part of what held his world and his subjects in temper. Alone, unchecked, it had evolved into pure evil. That too by itself could not be King.

He had to somehow rejoin with his darker half. And it had to be done soon. Hoggle was contacting him in exactly forty eight hours. It was logical to assume that if his powers were growing, then so was the man in black's. Who knew what he would do when strong enough?

He had to fix himself somehow staying here, with Sarah, was not an option. And he would not, could not use her for his own desires and then leave her. Didn't know if he could leave her, if he let his heart make his decisions for him.

She deserved better than that. She deserved better than him.

His lips pressed into a determined line, Jareth rolled away from her and out of the bed.

* * *

Knowing what she wanted set Sarah in a sideways mood as she stepped out of the shower. She didn't feel like herself and yet was in total control of her emotions. After her shower she calmly donned a pair of faded jeans tattered beyond belief the jeans she wore in the Labyrinth. She'd never been able to get rid of them. Paired with a gray camisole and her hair twisted into a bun at her nape, she greeted Jareth looking as youthful as she had when they first met.

His eyes remained averted as he mumbled a hello.

"I see you've figured out the coffee machine," she mused, pouring herself a cup.

Wispy blonde spikes bobbed up and down as he agreed. "This is something I will most definitely miss."

Sarah's lips twisted into a wry grin. "Coffee's the thing you're going to miss?"

Her tone earned her his gaze, quick and hot and speaking volumes before he ducked his head again.

She sat across from him at the kitchen table, one knee tucked under her and one leg up to prop her elbow on like she used to do as a child. Sarah blew on the steaming dark liquid.

"So you're gonna miss coffee. Does that mean you know what's going on?"

"No."

"No? So why will you miss coffee if you still don't know how to get back?"

"I will find a way." For the first time this morning, he stared straight at her without flinching. "I must."

She cocked her head at him, an eyebrow raised.

"Because of what happened last night. He is growing stronger. He...he hurt you."

Her shoulder, the one the Goblin King bit, was healed thanks to Jareth, but there was a residual redness from the bite. Glancing down at it sobered Sarah's quizzical and kamikaze seductive mood. Her mind flashed to a vision of her as the Queen of Midnight, with vampire lips and dead corpse eyes. He saved her last night, and here she was taunting him. Shame washed over her.

"You were right. I'm sorry I pushed you away."

The assuring smile he gave her was little more than the corners of his mouth twitching vaguely upwards. "If you are feeling up to it, I would like to hear about your dream."

Her first thought was not of the Goblin King, but of dreaming that Jareth had come to her it had been so real it was still wandering around in her head, unsure if it should file itself as a dream or a memory. On the heels of that thought was the constriction of her leather harness-like dress with the dark man's hands on her. Sarah shuddered involuntarily and set her coffee down.

Omitting the erotic prologue that starred Jareth, she shakily told him everything she could remember. The chess game; Jareth and Sarah as the White King and Queen, the evil surrounding the Black King, and the dark version of herself as his Queen. When she finished she was drained.

Jareth lifted his hand, twisted his wrist, and a handkerchief appeared, draped from his fingers. He stood and moved around the table to crouch next to her, delicately touching the cloth to her damp cheeks. Only then did Sarah realize she'd been crying. Hastily she grabbed the handkerchief away from him and scrubbed at her own face.

"I didn't realize you hated me so much."

Jareth rocked back on his heels, stunned, hands gripping his knees.

"I do not hate you, Sarah."

"Not this you. The Goblin King you. He hates me enough to try and kill me. To try to...to rape me. I didn't know I'd made you so _angry._"

Jareth leaned over and grasped her by her arms. Still partially caught up in reliving her dream, Sarah gasped and tried to pull away but he wouldn't let her. His eyes were blazing and his cheeks were flushed.

"I was not angry at you," he said forcefully. "I was angry at myself. I was angry for a lot of reasons for being defeated a slip of a girl and " His voice lowered. " and for wishing, for the briefest instant, that I _would_ lose."

Sarah drew a sharp intake of breath, her eyes newly wet. "You wh-what?"

Jareth sighed and dropped his head. His hands slid from her forearms down, until his fingers were intertwined with hers. His next admission was spoken to the linoleum floor, choked out as if the words were clawing to stay in his throat.

"You were so determined so beautiful I I could not crush your light." His voice dropped to a whisper, but he finally met her gaze, his eyes begging her to understand. "I had never felt like that before." He sighed. "A part of me wanted you to win."

"And the other part hated me for winning." She recalled their conversation from the previous day. "No wonder you were confused."

"Do you see? I have to fix this_._ He does not sleep. He does not feel. He will never stop. You will never be safe. _I have to fix this."_

Sarah slid off the chair and dropped to her knees in front of him. "What about you? What about what you want?"

"What I want is irrelevant."

"No! You have spent your entire existence following the demands set upon you. What is it that you..._Jareth..._want?"

His head bowed, he shook it once, a vicious twitch to the right and left.

"Look at me Jareth." Her voice was calm and commanding at the same time. "Please look at me."

His head raised up until she could see his face through wisps of golden hair. His eyes were wet.

"What do you want?" Sarah asked him gently.

He voice was barely a whisper. "You."

It felt like someone punched her in the stomach. Time stopped, and she couldn't breath. All she could do was stare at him, his eyes unblinking, his mouth set in a tight line, his nostrils flaring with every breath he took. As if looking in a mirror, a tear slipped from his right eye just as she felt wetness trail down her left cheek.

"Huh," she said as a half laugh, half sob, and began kissing him.

Provoked by her words and tears, this time he didn't turn away. In fact, once her lips touched his, his self imposed restraint dissolved and he took control. Desire rushed through her like a current until she was sure the two of them were vibrating with pure electricity. This this was what it was like to be kissed, really kissed. Their gasps mingled into one shared breath, and for the first time since she faced Jareth in the Labryinth, she really felt alive.

He murmured something incomprehensible against her mouth that she didn't quite catch because her brain was full of clouds. When she didn't respond he broke the kiss and stared at her until her eyes re-focused.

"I cannot stay here with you," he rasped.

Sarah licked her lips and nodded. "I know."

"Yet you still want this? To be used and left?"

Sarah smiled at him so tenderly what was left of his heart broke. "I want you. I don't care if its once or a thousand times. I'll take what I can get."

His hand rose, traced her face so delicately she could barely feel it. "You are so beautiful, and so strong," he whispered, almost to himself. "How did I ever think that I could stop you from reaching the castle?"

Sarah kissed him then, slowly and sweetly. It felt so good that she was glad she had resisted the urge to kiss him years ago when he danced with her; if she had, she would have truly forgotten all about Toby.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

Jareth drifted in that place between awake and asleep. He was aware of Sarah, naked and wrapped around him like a piece of ivy, and of the slight dampness of their sweat that clung to the sheets beneath them. But his mind was stretched out much further than their little haven on the bed, it stretched past the sunlight filtering in through the windows, past the clouds, and into a memory.

He was walking through the Labyrinth, his boot heels clicking against the cobblestones in the hedge maze. The Labyrinth was a second home to him next to the Goblin City, but for some reason every turn he made, every corner he rounded led him to a dead end, forcing him to backtrack. Frustration growing, he began to run, making choices at random, feet pounding so hard against the stones that the brownie caretakers dared to shake their tiny fists at him.

_He flew around a corner and ran headlong into a body, falling down with an audible 'oof!' Before the stars receded from his vision, he heard a loud squawking._

"_Woo-woo! Look who's so high and mighty he doesn't need to watch where he's going!"_

_Jareth, the King of the Goblins, rubbed his head and winced at the chalkboard screech of the voice. He squinted up and found the head of a bird peering at him from two inches away._

"_He's fine," the bird cawed in Jareth's face, and the ugly sight receded. Two strong hands helped Jareth to his feet._

"_Well well well! What have we here, the Gobling King running his own maze?"_

Oh. Its you_, Jareth thought, cocking his head and regarding the old man with the talking hat with some reservation. The man, nameless to all inhabitants of the Labyrinth, had walked the maze as long as anyone could remember. Truth be told, he made Jareth a little nervous. And that hat, well…the hat was just annoying._

"_What are you running from, young man?"_

_Jareth's eyebrow rose at the insolence in the old man's informal address, but decided to let it pass. For now._

"_I need to get back to my castle. Do you know the way?" _

Outside of the memory, lying in bed with Sarah, Jareth remembered the distaste of reducing himself to asking for directions; it felt like having his teeth pulled out with a pair of rusty pliers. Startled to harbor such an ugly thought, he pulled Sarah closer to him and she murmured against his chest in a way that woke up parts of him even while his mind half-slept. Desperate to see what else there was to see in his memory/dream, he firmly shut down his baser instincts and fell back into his semi trance.

"_I know lots of ways," the old man said with a twinkle in his eye. "For a price."_

"_Chump." The hat added his two cents._

"_You would dare charge me? I could have you suspended headfirst into the Bog of Eternal Stench. BOTH of you," he added as an afterthought, glaring at the bird hat._

_The old man waited quietly, patiently. His hat decided to honk his way through the opening bars of Tocatta en Fugue very loudly and very off-key. Finally Jareth had enough._

"_So be it! What is your charge?"_

"_A wish."_

_Jareth's eyebrow shot up again. "A wish," he repeated. "Any particular wish in mind?"_

"Your_ wish."_

"_I wish to know the way to my castle."_

_The frizzy white hair drifted back and forth as the elder shook his head. "You have been at the mercy of other's wishes for an eternity. I want to know, if _you_ could wish for anything, what would it be?"_

_Jareth opened his mouth, ready to brush the old man's request off with a simple wish of having a clean throne room for once, when something inside of him called out._

Wait.

Six years ago your kingdom was destroyed by a girl. Ever since then, you have been unable to spend more than five minutes without thinking about her, about what you could have said differently…different pleas uttered to change the way she brutally ripped the fabric of the Underground apart at the seams. The way she left you behind. What would you really wish for, if you could wish for anything? What keeps you up at nights? What haunts your days? What would make you happy?

_Love._

_Revenge._

_Both thoughts came to him at once, intertwining into a single wish._

"_You shall have your wish," the old man agreed. _

_Before Jareth could ask him what that meant, when he hadn't voiced his wish, the old man clapped three times, the sharp reports echoing down the leafy corridors. _

_The hat hissed at Jareth. "Sucker."_

_Before Jareth could retaliate, the old man raised his bony hand, pointing down a corridor with a gnarled finger that was tipped with a yellowing fingernail._

"_Your castle lies that way."_

_Feeling disturbed about the entire encounter, Jareth turned and started down the correct path. Something made him glance over his shoulder one last time. The old man was smiling kindly at him and waved good-bye from within the ancient folds of his robes. His hat stuck out its tongue._

"_Have fun," they both called, and then it was like a rope was tied around his waist; he was yanked rudely down the path, his heels digging fruitlessly into the stone tiles. _

_Then._

_He was in his bed in the castle._

_Then._

_The man in black was on top of him, ripping and tearing and howling._

Jareth jerked awake, mind and body accounted for in the here and now. He was alarmed for all of a microsecond before everything snapped into place and he turned his head to find Sarah watching him with a half-smile on her face.

His heartbeat slowed under her stare. A lifetime passed between them in the moments they spent looking at each other.

"I love you," Jareth said simply.

Sarah's heart tightened as if he had put his hand through her chest and squeezed on it. It wasn't possible to be this happy, it wasn't, and even if it was it wouldn't last. But for now, it was everything she had ever wanted and by all that was holy, she was going to relish every second.

Say your right words, the goblins said.

This time she remembered her line.

"I love you too," she whispered.

Jareth gathered her into his arms and pulled her under him, and for a long time after, there was no need for words, right or wrong.

* * *

Something as mediocre as slicing an apple was an adventure when Jareth was standing naked right behind her, doing wonderful and impudent things to her breasts. His palms lightly grazed the skin there, and she had to focus intensely on the cut of the knife.

"You'd think the robe I put on was an indicator that it was time for food," Sarah quipped at the apple, with a sly sideways glance at the grinning man behind her.

Jareth's hands slid out from the gap in the front of her robe and moved instead to the precariously loose bow tied at her waist and pulled. The look on his face was a very deliberate innocence. "I have no idea what you are talking about," he said seriously. With another tug, the belt fell loose.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders with exaggerated chagrin, and the robe slid down her arms and fell in a pool of silk at her feet. "I can be confusing sometimes," she agreed. When Jareth skimmed his hands up her bare back to her neck, rubbing and kneading gently, Sarah put the paring knife down and let her head fall forward under his ministrations.

He turned her so she was facing him, and she saw he was more than ready. Even though she now knew what it was like to kiss the goblin king, it was still an unexpected pleasure.

_Right here, right now_, she thought as his fingers played between her legs.

Jareth nodded resolutely. "Agreed."

As he lifted her in his arms, he swept the cutting board with the apple slices to the side and set her gently on the counter.

"Is it really fair to have a lover who can read your mind?" Sarah gasped as he entered her.

"That is right, it is not fair," he agreed again.

* * *

"Okay, for real this time," Sarah said half an hour later. Her hair was as tousled as an albatross nest, she hadn't bothered with the robe this time, but dammit; she was going to finish cutting the apples for her fruit and cheese plate even if he produced a diamond ring and a minister with a twist of his wrist.

It didn't matter if Jareth was real or a figment of her imagination; he made her knees turn to jell-o. But in the best way possible.

Jareth was behaving himself, reclining on the couch with a content smile on his face.

Sarah brought the tray of artfully placed sliced fruit and three kinds of cheese over and set it on the end table, and then perched next to him on a cushion. She'd never been one for excessive nudity but his casual attitude was contagious; clothes seemed a burden.

"Have I ever told you how wise you are?" he asked through a mouthful of fruit.

She reached for a piece of cheddar and an apple slice. "No." The combination of sharp cheddar and sweet red apple was heaven in her mouth.

"Have I ever told you how generous you are?"

She swallowed, smiled, and reached for a piece of sliced peach. Heedless of the mess it might make, she squeezed the juice on his groin and, keeping her gaze locked with his, smiling a bit at his genuinely shocked intake of breath, leaned over and began to lick it off.

Jareth's voice became choked. "Have I ever told you how cruel you are?"

* * *

Sarah never thought that, if presented with the opportunity to shower with the Goblin King, she would be too tired to do anything but stand in his arms and let the water wash over them. But here she was.

He looked different in the shower. The softness his hair lent to his profile was gone, slicked back under the spray so his jaw line and high cheekbones made him angular. It gave him an edge that reminded her of his original incarnation.

Water changed his texture, and she was happy to just stand in the shower with him and watch the vein in his neck pulse in time with his heartbeat. She stood closer, it pulsed more. She backed up, it settled down. His knees bumped hers. The Goblin King had knees and they bumped hers as they shifted to take turns under the warm water.

She knew he was watching her too, and it made her feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. How could she feel so beautiful when all he did was look at her?

Their appetites, once unleashed, led to a long exploration that lasted throughout the morning and well into late afternoon. Love, followed by light dozing, followed by more love continued until reality set in and she realized she was one hundred and twenty percent satiated, and her body was telling her explicitly that it needed a break.

So…shower. And watching him in the shower.

Her cheek against the wet skin of his chest, Sarah was content now to listen to his heartbeat. Somehow she'd managed to shut off that part of her brain that was pre-mourning the time when he would leave her.

Until he opened his mouth.

"I dreamt of the Labyrinth last night," he said.

She could hear the reluctance in his voice at breaking the seal of their time constrained haven. He was the one with the ability to read her mind, but she knew instinctively that he needed her to be strong, to be able to let him go when it was time to go. She could be strong. Focused.

And then after…she'd burn that bridge when she came to it.

Sarah pulled back from him enough to look in his eyes.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

"Tell me," she said, and he did.

His recital lasted through toweling off, slipping into lounging clothes, and tapered off a couple of minutes after they had settled like bookends, facing each other on opposite ends of the couch. His breech of their safe haven made the distance between them necessary; Sarah knew neither one would be able to bear speculating on how to get back to the Underground while nestled in each other's arms.

Still, she drank in the sight of him as if he were an ounce of water in the desert. Soon enough he would be gone, her life would get back to normal; whatever of it she could salvage, and she would not get to observe how smooth and muscled his forarms were, how he chewed his lower lip when his thoughts made him lost, or how he could fold up into her couch with the perfect blend of artistic rebel and haughty royalty.

"...then I woke up in my chambers, and I was attacked," Jareth was saying, and Sarah forced her pre-grief into a far pocket of her mind. Slipping on her reading glasses just to be able to participate in the conversation with a small piece of her scientist persona allowed her to do so. The more she fired questions at him, rhetorical or otherwise, the easier it was to be old Sarah of the analytical mind. Their situation was a problem...of a fairytale nature yes, but still...just a problem. A theory. And she was good at hypothesis.

"The old man. He is the key." Sarah was sure of it. "I remember him...who is he?"

"Who is anyone when they are in the Labyrinth?" Jareth lamented, rubbing a tired hand over his face.

Sarah was no English major but she remembered enough about character studies from her Lit class in high school. "When I was in the Labyrinth, _I_ was the heroine."

Jareth looked up at her, startled. She continued, nonplussed, "And _you_ were the villain I had to conquer."

"I do not understand."

"Plot devices. Hoggle was my Pancho Villa...my sidekick," she explained when his brows drew together. "Ludo was my kindness. Sir Didymus was my courage to go on." Her eyes slid off his face to stare into the brilliant pink and gold clouds that veiled the setting sun. So what did that make the Man in the Bird Hat?

_Sometimes it seems like we are not getting anywhere, when indeed we are._

_The way forward is sometimes the way back._

He was the prophet...he was the wizard. If old kung fu movies and Sean Connery in Highlander were even slightly true, wise old masters had special powers at their disposal. Wax on, wax off. Choose wisely. These are not the droids you are looking for.

Yeah...but a talking hat too?

"He is the master," Sarah finally said. "He did this. We have to find him."

"Sarah...I do not know how to get back to the Labyrinth. My magic is not enough."

A weight settled in her stomach. _He_ may not know how...but she did. How did she get into the Labyrinth in the first place?

"We have to wish ourselves there." It was not a happy revelation.

Jareth fell silent. He seemed to thrum with energy, so much so that the air around him shimmered like a mirage. Unable to contain such energy while sitting, Sarah watch silently as he jumped up and began pacing. If this were a cartoon, a thought bubble would appear over his head picturing gears turning.

Tomorrow marked three days' passage since Jareth last spoke with Hoggle. Contact would be established and a decision had to be made. So far they knew what had happened, had a more than reasonable hypothesis on why it happened, and Sarah knew that when the time came to go back, a simple wish is all it would take. But once they got to the Underground...then what?

"It is decided then." Jareth stopped had stopped pacing and stood facing her, his shoulders back and held high with a close resemblance of haughtiness.

She untucked her legs from beneath her. "What's decided?"

"I will go back to the Underground and face my darker half."

He looked like he was trying so hard to project that he had the edge; that _edge_ that made him take unwanted children and force innocent girls to run through a Labyrinthian Odyssey while maintaining that perfect balance of help and hurt. Too bad she knew that his arrogance had been physically removed from his body.

"Wrong pronoun, Sir," she said testily.

"I am sorry?"

Sarah removed her reading glasses and stood up, approaching him with the same impertinence that had once propelled her to accuse him of being unfair as he taunted her with upping the stakes. "'_We_', Jareth. Not 'I'. _We_ will go to the Goblin City."

His lips, which had kissed every inch of her body, frowned. "I cannot expose you to that monster."

Now she planted her feet directly in front of him and crossed her arms. She had known when this started that she wouldn't get to keep him, but she also wasn't going to let him be led like a lamb to the slaughter.

"Too late. I'm a player in this game. He can see me in mirrors and in my dreams. In my damn _dreams_," she repeated loudly. "I have a stake in this too."

Jareth shook his head, his now-dry hair floating around his face with the motion. "He could hurt you."

"I don't care-"

He grabbed her arms and shook her, his voice tight and deep with panic. "_I could hurt you_."

Ah. So that's what this was about. He wasn't being macho, he was genuinely afraid that as a worse case scenario he would lose to his darker self, and as a best case scenario he would succeed, be rejoined...and still lose control. His eyes, shifting from a panicked emerald to a solemn jade, were almost iridescent. He begged without words, pleaded silently for her understanding.

"I won't let you do this alone." Sarah was the calm eye of the storm as his fear circled the air around them. She waited patiently for it to die down and then repeated herself. "_We_."

Jareth saw the resolve in her eyes, dropped his hands from her shoulders and nodded, defeated. It hurt her heart to see him so broken, so passive. Without the cruelty to shore up his kindness, he had the same amount of substance as if she tried to grab her own shadow and hold it.

He dropped to the couch, as if that simple confrontation had exhausted him. "Tomorrow then. We return. Tonight, we rest before battle."

Sarah nodded, biting her lip. It was Thursday night. Normally right about now she would be stopping for a dollar grilled cheese at the local diner with Kee before a marathon of whatever sitcom they were into for the season. Thursdays were great days when it came to school; no classes to teach, the lab opened late on Fridays so she could always sleep in or dawdle on the way to work...was that really what she had done last week? Yes...it was. Fast forward a hundred and sixty eight odd hours and she was trying to pull a brave and zen-like front in the face of dangers untold, hardships unnumbered, and barreling toward what would probably be the worst heartbreak in human history. This wasn't the chapter in the story that she wanted, but it was what came next. When the last page had been read, when the book was closed and set back onto its dusty bookshelf high in the recesses of her mind...she'd figure out how to reopen the book her life had been a week ago.

If they survived.

In the meantime...

"I'm going to make some food." Sex, plotting, and an apple and cheese plate eaten hours and hours ago was not enough to keep up their strength.

Funny though...she didn't feel like eating.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

_Sooo...thanks for the heads up about the crackdown on inappropriate content. I have edited this story down to a more appropriate level as I had my account deleted once already. Personally this sucks; ninety percent of the stuff I've read is gonna go bye bye most likely. Anyway...enjoy_

* * *

Jareth felt like he was trapped in his own version of the Labyrinth. Instead of Helping Hands and a trio of companions, he had a tea kettle whistling a tune on the stove and the cast of what Sarah said was called 'Are You Being Served' on the television. As Sarah prepared dinner and he sat on the windowsill, he ran through the maze of his mind.

Finally admitting what his heart had wanted for years and actually getting it was not the relief he thought it would be. If anything he hurt worse. Not in his leg or the scratches on his face, which had healed over the course of the last two days to be barely noticeable, but in his heart. It was his first experience with what he thought could be labelled love, what he had declared to her as love, but everything he had ever read on the subject hadn't warned him that love would hurt.

Every few minutes the focus of his gaze shifted between staring out the window to staring at her - Sarah - as she moved through her kitchen and apartment. She looked calm but Jareth had somehow learned enough about her during the confrontation with Gary, the lunch with her friends; discovered the very nature of Sarah as she interacted with the experiences of the last few days, that told him otherwise. She looked calm but her restless wandering around his peripheral vision; moving books off the end table, folding and re-folding napkins, and chopping celery, spoke volumes. She was anxious.

So was he.

His heart told him to draw his weapon and plunge headfirst into a battle to defend his kingdom.

His head told him he did not stand a chance.

It was that latter intuition - that seed of doubt - that terrified him.

Never before had he wasted one moment in wavering. Or caring about doing the right thing.

Or being afraid of losing.

He was not a King.

A King's words and actions were law. In the Underground there was no other way; weakness meant chaos. Only someone who had the ability to hold the reigns of an eight-headed foaming mad horse that breathed fire could be ruler of the Labyrinth. In his current incarnation, he would be more concerned with staying away from the flames than knowing where to point the horses' heads to exact his will.

Unconsciously, he produced three crystal spheres with a twist of his wrist and began spinning them in his palm. It was calming, mentally soothing him as he mused.

He could smell something delicious simmering on the stove; watched the rise and fall of Sarah's arms as she reached for spices and stirred them in.

One of the benefits to seperating the ego from the id was that with his pompous irrationality gone, he could see clearly what had to transpire to fix...well...fix everything, really.

If the dark King destroyed him, the Labyrinth would burn under the madman's regime. Sarah would be hunted down and killed if she were lucky; tortured and enslaved if not.

If he killed the dark King, the Underground would fall into ruins as its denizens waged riots in the streets under a weak and ineffectual leader.

They had to rejoin. Had to. Somehow.

That meant leaving Sarah behind.

At that thought, his hand jerked and a crystal ball fell on the floor and shattered. The crystal, which had been partially tied to his emotions, erupted shards in every direction.

Jareth felt a sting on his arm and hissed just as Sarah shrieked in surprise from her place in the kitchen.

"What was_ that_?"

She rushed toward him and he had to jump off the sill to meet her halfway. She was barefoot and there were shards everywhere. Right hand clamped over the scratch on his left forearm, he tried to smile reassuringly.

"I dropped one of my crystals and was rewarded with a scratch for my clumsiness."

Sarah peered over his shoulder at the shattered remains and arched one ebony eyebrow at him. "That was...loud. Are you okay?"

Jareth nodded. "I will be. Do not come closer. I do not want you to hurt yourself."

One side of her mouth turned up in a small grin. "So chivalrous. Let me get some shoes on and the broom." She turned to go but he stopped her. Maybe it was that tiny smile, the first one he had seen this evening...or maybe it was his strength returning, that made him say '_wait.'_

Sarah turned back to him, a questioning look on her face.

Releasing his injured forearm, he reached into his back pocket and fished out his silver pendant. Still bearing scorch marks, he carefully drew it over his head. Hanging in its rightful place on his breastbone, he crossed his hands at his wrists in front of him and closed his eyes. He drew his arms up and twisted his wrists in a gesture that would have made Bollywood dancers proud. After a few seconds he dropped one hand and held the other aloft as if waiting for Sarah to high five him. As his fingers curved inward, the shards of broken crystal heeded his call and coalesced back into a shining sphere in his hand.

Jareth released the breath he had been holding.

Grinning at Sarah, he held the crystal out to her. Her eyes were as wide as a child's on Christmas morning.

"I can hold it?" she asked with such reverence that his heart, were it not already so, would have been hers. He nodded, still exhilarated from the rush of magic.

Gently, as if she were being handed a newborn babe, she took the crystal in her hand. She held it in her palm while he cupped her hands in his. The crystal's luminous surface sparkled with all the possibilities that it could be. Sarah's lopsided smile had become full blown; dimples on both cheeks and all. "Its so warm!"

"Magic usually is." They stood together, her fascinated by the feel of something so otherworldly and him by the wonder on her face as she gazed at the sphere. He moved one her hands to cover the orb and laid his fingers over hers. "Keep it."

Sarah looked uncertain. "What do I do with it?"

The last time he offered her this gift there were strings attached.

_Look at what I'm offering._

_Let me rule you and you can have everything._

_Just fear me, love me, do as I want and I will be your slave._

Jareth was finally able sever the puppet masters's strings. "Whatever you wish."

I wish...I wish...

"I think I'll keep it safe for now." Gently, as if balancing a bowl full of water, she moved to the dresser in her bedroom and deposited the sphere in a spare drawer filled with gaily colored scarves. It wasn't the most elegant place, but it was the most practical.

"How's your arm?" she asked when she returned.

He held it out for her appraisal. There was a smudge of crusted blood where the scratch had been but of the wound itself, no trace remained.

"Wow."

"Indeed," he agreed, flexing his arm a few times.

"Come on. Dinner's ready."

* * *

They ate their fettuccine in companionable silence. Small talk was too small; big talk was too depressing. It was nice to just sit for the time they had and be present in the moment.

The impending battle was no excuse to forgo chores, so after the dishes were dutifully rinsed and put away, Sarah led him to a secret hangout on the roof of the building that one of her neighbors had set up. It was slightly chilly, and a bit damp so no one was using it. There were a few patio chairs and lounge chairs that were meant for a beach set up on top of a patch of outdoor carpet the color of malnourished shrubbery. It was crude and obviously the work of poor grad students, but when Jareth and Sarah lay curled together in one of the lounge chairs, draped in a chenille throw and gazing up at the stars, Jareth felt as rich as a king.

"Will you still talk to me...after?" Sarah finally asked the question that had been in the back of his mind all evening. She lay in his arms, her head tucked into the crook of his elbow and her legs tangled up with his and he sighed as he thought about how to answer. Honesty wasn't just the best policy, it was the only policy for him.

"I do not know."

He had been pondering that. It was hard to even think about an alternate option to leaving Sarah behind because he did not know what he would be like if they did succeed tomorrow. Leave her to rejoin with his darker half or what...rejoin with his darker half and hope that enough good won out to allow them to share something more? He had languished in his self-imposed limbo since her time in the Labyrinth until his wish to the Old Man, so any promises he made would be as unpalatable as the peach he once gave her.

Sarah sighed and nodded. He felt rather than saw it, and wrapped his arms around her tighter in response.

"Have there ever been any...you know...humans in the Labyrinth?"

Jareth thought about it. "Yes. Some found us through their own means. Some were brought there and chose to stay."

"Like who?"

"The Trash Goblins, for one."

Sarah shifted a little bit in their cocoon as she remembered the dirty-haired, mumbling grumbling hunchbacked goblin that had tempted her.

_You can't look where you're going if you don't know where you're going._

_Don't you like your toys?_

She hadn't thought about the Junk Lady since she left the Labyrinth. Looking back with her not-as-juvenile mind, she realized that her rejection of her trinkets and props was one of the turning points in her journey. She had known the second she wished Toby away that she had done a Bad Thing, and that she, as the heroine, had to save him. But just like dressing up in the park, her initial enthusiasm at solving the Labyrinth had just been another form of playacting. She was the princess in the book. She was the wronged damsel, off on a quest. It was only when she first rejected Jareth's advances at the ball, and then destroyed the doppelganger bedroom by remembering what he had tried to make her forget, that she actually sacrificed something she wanted. First love, and then the happiness of her childhood. Too young for one, too grown up for the other. It was such a precarious time of life to be in that she could only imagine some people getting lost under the mounds of baubles and ornaments from their youth until they became junkyard inhabitants themselves.

Sarah shivered.

"Anyone else?"

He gazed down at her. "Some never left the Masquerade."

Now _that_ she remembered easier; how many times had she laid in bed, sweating, her legs tangled up in her blankets as she woke up from a dream that she was back there? Until she decided the pain of clinging to a dream was not worth it, and stored those confusing feelings up on a shelf along with her tinfoil crown. "The same ball?"

"It changes, of course. Some chose perpetual Saturnalia. Some chose the sentiment of the junkyard. Some wound up elsewhere, in their own legends."

"Did anyone make it out?"

He traced a hand down the side of her face. "You did."

Her knee insinuated itself between his thighs as she slid closer. He wasn't aroused but if she continued the unconscious friction she was creating as she kissed him in the cold night air, he would be very soon.

Too late.

This time Jareth learned all the varying temperatures of the human body. How stark the contrast was between lips that were slightly icy from the night air to how hot her tongue could be as he licked it with his own. How his fingers trailing up her back caused goosebumps along her arms even as her body flushed with heat. How his fingers, by no means frostbitten, felt like they were thrust into an open fire when they touched her. Finally, how the human body is in itself an exothermic reaction; the more they moved together the more heat they gave off until their chenille cavern was like a sauna.

Clothes that hadn't moved around very much due to their location were readjusted and Sarah re-inserted herself in his arms. They were both sweating, grinning, and sad.

"I wish it didn't have to be like this," Sarah said, breaking the silence.

He stroked her hair away from her forehead. "I as well."

A few floors below them, nestled in a dresser drawer between a paisley headband and a chartreuse scarf, Sarah's crystal began to glow. As this was unbeknownst to either lover, they murmured together until, one by one, they fell asleep.

* * *

Sarah didn't move until the birds started chirping. Still half asleep, she dazedly wondered why they were louder than they normally were. It wasn't until she opened her eyes that she realized they must have fallen asleep while stargazing.

The second she started to move, Jareth awoke. She would have loved nothing more than to linger in these last moments of solitude, but her back hurt from a night on a lounge chair, she was trying to explain to Jareth that the stringing in his arm was just pins and needles and would go away, and both of them had an uncomfortable pressure in their bladders. So it was without ceremony that they found themselves hurrying down the fire escape, back into her apartment, and attending to their needs before a 'Good Morning' was even uttered.

It was as husband/wife-y a situation as she had ever gotten with anyone. Breaking all the rules of how fast to progress in a relationship, she found herself brushing her teeth and peeing at the same time while Jareth showered. Not thinking, she flushed the toilet and started profusely apologizing when Jareth yelped in the suddenly scorching shower. He jumped out, hissing and dripping on the floor. He grabbed the first thing he could; the towel that was draped over the bathroom mirror. Before she could throw something else back on there, much less spit out her toothpaste, they heard a glad voice call out from the depths of the mirror.

"Your majesty! Sarah!"

They both froze, looking as scared as teenagers caught necking in the basement. Jareth wrapped the towel around his middle and tried to look regal.

Sir Didymus and Hoggle were reflected in the mirror, standing in the throne room at the Goblin Castle. It looked like the entire Underground was behind them, throwing a party that made Mardi Gras look like something a two year old put on. "You did it, sire! The evil King is gone!" the foxy knight cried.

Sarah and Jareth exchanged a bewildered glance.

"This morning, everything was back to normal! The evil King is no more! The Labyrinth is in bloom again!"

Sarah was busy holding her hair back to spit out the toothpaste so it was Jareth, his skin lobster red, who was the first to recover his voice. "Where did he go?"

Hoggle, looking exhausted after living in terror for the last few days, was beaming. "There was an explosion of light last night. When it was over, he was gone! All the destruction and mayhem he caused is repaired. The Goblin City is restored! Thank you, Your Majesty, thank you!"

Sarah blindly grabbed Jareth's hand and was gripping it tight. Needing her as an anchor to the unfolding events, he gripped her right back. Where there was no hope last night, it was starting to flicker in both their minds and their tight grip was a subconscious way of holding on to it.

The Old Man in the Hat shuffled into their view. He pinned Sarah and Jareth with a gaze that was kinder than she remembered. He winked, touched the side of his nose (or picked it, Sarah wasn't too sure in her daze) and nodded at them. "Be happy," he said. "We have everything taken care of here."

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked him.

His bird hat gave them a very deliberate once over and wiggled his feathery eyebrows. "Get a room."

Ambrosious was barking happily as Didymus scratched him between the ears. "Call us when you need us milady...we will be here watching over the Labyrinth, keeping everything in line. It is all worked out."

Sarah's mind was reeling. It would have stayed that way but-

"Sarah."

She closed her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat. Would she ever get tired of the way he said her name? Was it really and truly happening that she might get a chance to find out?

She turned to Jareth.

"I get to keep you?" she whispered.

As an answer, he pulled her close and kissed her in front of his subjects as they cheered.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**Author's note:**

**1) I told you the last chapter wasn't the end.**

**2) When I think about what the worst thing that could ever happen to me might be...its this. It wasn't this 5 years ago...but with Max here now...it is.**

**3) auriellis : Verrrrry good! You and KL Morgan are the only ones to ever clue into that :)**

**4) In the process of editing down all M content to be PG13. I had my account deleted once. Over it. Lame lame lame.**

**5) I'm lovin' the long reviews. Like I said...this chapter would never have been written a couple of years ago. The beginning and end of this story are the same. The middle...my, but the middle has changed in the years I have been poking at it. Fascinating.**

* * *

It took only ONE month to reorganize her life to fit an ex-Goblin King into the puzzle of her life. It meant shifting out some of the pieces; when the professors Sarah sublet from came back, she had already found them a quaint one-bedroom above a coffee house near the bay. It was smaller than the loft downtown, but it was a palace that was _theirs. _

Reporting back in to her department at the university was not necessarily preferred but for financial sakes it was _required_. It was hard for Sarah to leave Jareth during the day for fear she would come home only to find out the last four weeks had been a dream.

But every night she walked through the door to their home and found him immersed in something new that captured his fancy; learning the piano, testing different blends of tea, even watching the Westminster Dog Show elicited fascination for him. Each new study he included her in and Sarah loved these informal lessons fiercely because she got to watch him fall in love with her world.

Kee's piece grew bigger and took over more space in the puzzle as her friendship with Sarah and Jareth grew while Roger's and Gary's were lost under the floorboards. The lost pieces made Sarah sad when she remembered the old picture her previous puzzle depicted, but the new picture, the one in which Jareth was prominently featured, balanced out her nostalgia for pieces of the past she couldn't include anymore.

* * *

TWO semesters went by before Jareth gently brought up the delicate point that she didn't like her work.

It wasn't the fault of her lab or her colleagues, most of whom were on board with the tale she wove of getting back together with her high school boyfriend. It wasn't the fault of the subject matter, it was more the fact that she had finally dusted off that high shelf where she stored her true interests in the name of growing up, and once the reality of Jareth, her job, their life, her family, his passion, and that the Labyrinth was real and so was magic and fairies and oh...everything really...once it set in, she wasn't afraid to climb mountains and slide through muddy valleys instead of walking the linear line of science anymore.

After a night of musing by herself, Sarah realized it all came down to one point: she was bored in the lab.

That didn't solve the problem of money, and she told him so.

And that's when she found out that all the random little tidbits Jareth had been studying had turned themselves into a slightly profitable business. He had procured a store front that specialized in hand-made elixirs, lotions, potions, and tonics in the artsy neighborhood in town. Where he got the money or just how much magic was involved she never asked about, but it did give her the freedom to take a step back and decide just what she wanted to do next.

In the meantime, there were many kisses shared, many mornings spent lying together in a patch of sunlight on their couch, many meatballs burnt as Jareth dabbled in Italian cuisine, and many explorations into thrift stores to add to Jareth's growing wardrobe which still resembled something that belonged to a hip beach bum.

It took many looks of disbelief before Sarah got used to the cowboy hat he had taken to sporting day in and day out, and even more looks of shock when he came home one night with his long hair cut neatly above his shoulders.

Sometimes she had to pinch herself to remember he was a mythical king; after almost a year of living with him, sleeping with him, brushing her teeth next to him, and teaching him to ride a bicycle, it was so easy to forget that fact about Jareth.

Then he would return from one of his journeys to the beach as snowy owl that swooped in through a window, or she would come home from a walk and find a goblin trying to mop the kitchen floor, and she would remember.

_Oh, right. He's him. The Goblin King._

The goblins were horrible housemaids.

* * *

"I told you THREE times, I'm not doing it!"

Jareth patiently watched her pace while she struggled with sending a children's book manuscript..._their _story, really, to a publisher.

It had taken her months to write, months to try rough drafts of watercolor illustrations vs. collage vs. oil painting vs. pencil drawing vs. CGI, and months to blend all the elements together when Jareth suggested why not use all the mediums together? The result was a work of art that was a mixed medium stroke of genius...just like their story.

_Labyrinth._

"Sarah...it is beautiful. Why did you work so hard if you were not going to share it?"

Lower lips were made for chewing, she realized.

* * *

"We've been celebrating for FOUR weeks now, Jareth. Why do we need to go out for another celebratory dinner?" Sarah wrinkled her nose at him even as she slipped her head into the light green lacy shift. It was a newer purchase that Jareth insisted on after her book deal came through.

She kept trying to reason with him, saying that one book did not equal fame and riches. She didn't have the force of will to argue with him too much, not when he pointed out how the dress matched her eyes or how it seemed to be made for her. She was glad she lacked the strength to resist when she saw him in his smart suit, standing tall and elegant in slim cut black trousers and a dark navy tailored shirt. When paired with a jacket it was almost too much to take in, and she was glad she had such a perfect dress to wear while she walked next to him on the sidewalk, sat next to him at the bistro.

Dinner was lovely. Lavish but not heavy on the price tag. Jareth knew that despite their solidly growing finances, money still concerned her and was always careful to spoil her only every once in awhile. Someday she might get over that but...

The walk home was lovely; a warm front met the cool ocean air and shrouded the streets in fog. It was a little magical, especially when the man who held her hand was a lot magical.

Sarah let them into the apartment, sweeping her hair back from her face with a hand as she laughed at something Jareth said and she would remember that moment for a very long time; that she was laughing right before it happened.

Candles, small votives, covered every surface in the apartment. The golden glow reminded her of the light of the Underground; it shimmered like something unreal.

"Jareth, what-" Sarah said in amazement as she turned. When she saw him she dropped her purse and her blood froze.

Jareth was on one knee in front of her.

Sarah started shaking, her eyes as round as saucers. This was happening.

"Sarah. It has come to my attention that while we have managed to claim our Happily Ever After, we missed one significant step."

This _was_ happening.

"Sarah. Will you marry me?"

* * *

Results appear in under FIVE minutes.

Clearblue must have been hedging their bets when they listed 'results in under five minutes.' Theirs appeared in almost five SECONDS.

First she threw up again, then she took a shower. Then Sarah threw up again. Then she railed at Jareth for no reason other than the fact that the little plus sign on the test meant that their lives were about to change and why was he smiling like that when she was pregnant with the child of a mythological figure?

"Helen of Troy was the daughter of Zeus and a human."

"Please tell me you didn't know Zeus."

Jareth smiled.

* * *

Sarah's father and stepmother were in the hospital waiting room, along with Toby and Kee and a couple of other friends and allies Sarah and Jareth had made in the last few years.

Somewhere Underground, in another waiting room, Sir Didymus and Hoggle and Ludo and about a thousand goblins were waiting for word that the twins were born.

SIX pushes in total, and both Alexander and Emma were welcomed into both worlds.

"You're a daddy," the nurse was saying to Jareth, handing him his new daughter.

"...and here's your mommy," the doctor said as Alexander was placed on Sarah's chest.

Sarah started laughing and crying.

She wasn't the only one.

* * *

SEVEN three two Storybook Road was their new address. It was too perfect to pass up.

Life had always carried them along its stream, from their one bedroom crackerbox to the three bedroom condo and now here, to a beautiful three story Victorian-era house complete with a swing on it's porch. There was lawn for Alex and Emma, now two and a half, to play endless games of tag or hide and seek. There was a barn out back that could be converted to a work studio for Sarah, now well into her fourth book in the Underground series.

They were finally getting the twins potty trained, finally getting caught up on sleep, and finally getting their point across with their repeated refusals of letting the goblins babysit while Jareth and Sarah went out on a date.

Goblins were even worse nursemaids than housemaids.

* * *

EIGHT balloons rose into a clear blue sky on Alex and Emma's fourth birthday. Four for each child.

They had finally changed enough from babies to toddlers to kids that Sarah could see clearly who was taking after who.

Alex, with his dark hair and green cat's eyes, was her in every way save for his slim build. His athletic prowess and natural grace was all his father.

Emma had long white blonde curls and dancing blue eyes and still had a good amount of plumpness left over from infancy. Jareth's colors on a mini Sarah.

Jareth sauntered next to her, slipping his arm around her waist and tucking her against his side as she swallowed the lump of happiness in her throat she always seemed to feel when she watched Jareth watching their kids. She'd been in love with him since she was fifteen, sure, but to fast forward twenty years and be able to see him as a father, a husband, a lover, a friend, _and_ her childhood crush...she knew no one in the world was as lucky as she was.

"Mom! Mom! Did you see the b'loons? Did you?"

"I sure did Emma!" A daughter, a living continuation of her.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!" Alex thundered up the porch and pounced on Jareth. "Dad! You're a playground!" A son, the male who grew inside a female. Sometimes it was almost too much to take in.

Alex froze on top of Jareth. A familiar look of despair crossed his face, and Jareth yelped in surprise.

"I think I peed my pants."

Sometimes it wasn't.

* * *

On her forty-second birthday, Sarah found NINE gray hairs.

On each temple.

She frowned in the mirror, then caught a glimpse of what frowning did to her face and immediately stopped. Settling her features into what she privately thought of as her defiant princess look; shoulders back, chin elevated, and eyes sparkling, she serenely contemplated if it were time to color her hair.

Add the wisps of silver starting to be apparent in the otherwise chestnut locks, and the skin that was less firm than she remembered it to be ten...or even _five _years ago, and it equaled a possible start to a midlife crisis.

When she turned from the mirror she yelped; Jareth was standing right behind her, dressed in linen pants, an unbuttoned black shirt, and bare feet.

"No," he said with a solemn look on his face.

"'No', what?"

He sighed, as if pretending she didn't know that he knew what she had been thinking was pointless. The bemused look on his face, combined with the fact that even if he wasn't biologically in his forties, he had been aging right along with her, made him look almost exactly like he did when she first met him.

"No, you should not color one hair on your head." He smoothed a hand gently through her hair. "Each silver strand is a badge of honor. Each line on your skin is a thing of beauty."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "I notice you don't have any gray hairs Mr. Mythological King."

Sweeping one finger from his collarbone to his navel, he parted his shirt. It was a bit show-offy but it still made her mouth go dry. Until she saw what he was pointing to, and then she giggled.

Okay...so grey chest hairs could still be sexy...right?

* * *

When Alex and Emma, fresh from their high school graduation, announced that they were going to start a band and tour instead of going to college, Sarah found herself counting to TEN. When that didn't work, she counted to ten again in French.

She didn't speak the language, but she was sure Jareth was counting to ten in Goblinese.

* * *

June 15th, At ELEVEN p.m., PST, Emma became a mother.

Toby, fresh in from his fiftieth birthday backpacking tour, hugged Alex, congratulated Emma's husband Johann, shook Jareth's hand, and finally came to stand beside his sister.

He nudged Sarah in the way that little brothers, no matter how old they are, do.

"Hey _grandma_."

* * *

Jareth was released from the hospital after the chest pains that had turned out to be a minor heart attack under strict orders from Dr. Cain: TWELVE days of bed rest. Non-optional.

It was hard to believe but it was the first time in over forty years Sarah got seriously angry at Jareth.

No sooner than they had walked in the door to their house than Jareth seemed to dismiss the doctor's orders as if they were from a mere schoolchild. When she started to protest, his arrogance and disbelief that he could even have a heart attack made her so afraid that she burst into tears before she started yelling.

"I don't give a spit if you are the walking incarnation of _Christ._ Get in that bed for the next twelve days or so help me _God_ I will call Ludo and have him hold you down for two _months_. You do _not _get to ignore your health like that you...you..._idiot_!"

Only the promise of serving him chicken soup in bed while naked got him to grudgingly agree. The twins were touring with their band, their nearest neighbors were two miles away, and if he really wanted to ogle her seventy year old body then fine.

* * *

ONE...the grandfather clock on the mantel chimed in the darkness.

TWO...Sarah was sleeping.

THREE...sleep didn't come as easily or was as restful as it had been when she was twenty.

FOUR...at ninety-three, she couldn't complain too much.

FIVE...two children, five grandchildren, and one infant great-grandchild.

SIX...a book series that was her love story was shared worldwide.

SEVEN...a much higher percentage of laughter than of tears in her life.

EIGHT...Alex and Emma, the cause of much of the laughter. Her children. Her life.

NINE...giving back more than she got...which considering how much she did get, was a lot.

TEN...a husband who was as elderly and as frail as Sarah...and as amused by it as she was.

ELEVEN...listening to the sound of light breathing in the bed next to her and still feeling the flutters in her stomach, as if she were fifteen again.

TWELVE...happiness. Serenity. Peace. A lifetime of Love.

THIRTEEN.

* * *

The thirteenth chime on the grandfather clock caused Sarah's eyes to snap open. She came awake with the fear usually reserved for children who were certain something was waiting for them in the dark. The pulsing hot and cold of adrenaline was a lot for her frail body to take, and she lay frozen under the sheets, stiff and sweating.

Something was wrong.

Thirteen.

Metallic taste in her mouth as her nonagenarian brain reverted back to childhood, and to what it was like to be afraid of the monster under the bed.

In the closet.

_In the dresser._

In the dresser there was a soft glow coming from one of the drawers. It drew her gaze to it like a moth to a flame. Her gaze was all she could move; the rest of her was frozen in fear beneath the quilts. A wet warmth spread beneath her and dimly she realized her bladder had let go.

The light grew brighter. The sticky fear that still surrounded her formed a ball in Sarah's throat, one that was getting hard to breath around. She moaned, and the ill sound drew an answering sleep murmur from Jareth. It was supposed to be a comforting sound but he rolled over and felt the wet mattress and started to sit up.

"Sarah, what-"

He didn't even finish the sentence before the drawer slid open and light spilled out.

It grew as a crystal sphere..._the_ crystal sphere Jareth had given her a lifetime ago, hung silently in front of her.

In the weird glow Sarah turned to Jareth. Sad realization hung on his face as he saw what has happening and in that horrible light Sarah knew: he had known all along.

Chimes began to ring from its surface. Each one stabbed into her heart as hurtful as if they had been knives.

_"Please, no please no please no_-" it was all she could manage, whispered in her weak and wavering old lady voice, repeated in mantra to ward away what was happening.

Thirteen chimes.

Jareth threw off the covers with an agility defying his decades. As the world around her turned upside down she saw his slim youth leap across the room as he snatched for the sphere in an attempt to stop the end of the dream.

It wasn't his wish. He could stop nothing.

_I wish it didn't have to be like this._

Time to wake up, Sarah.

She felt the warm and cozy layers of the dream begin to slip away, the soft comfort of their love, years of laughter, memories of her children, all blankets being ripped away as the glow grew brighter and brighter until she was stripped naked and left alone in the darkness-

She began to scream.

* * *

Well...she got her wish. As much as his magic had allowed her to.

Sarah jerked awake for the first time, and the scream Sarah had started as a ninety year old tucked in bed came with her through the dream and rose in pitch as her twenty-two year old self wailed and her body struck out at him.

Her ears registered sounds like a rabbit being caught in a thresher, an awful broken screaming of an animal, not a human, an animal being crunched to death in the mouth of a predator, and she knew it was coming from her.

She clawed at Jareth, who she knew..._KNEW_...was trying to calm her down just so he could explain that it was really her fault, it was her wish so it was her fault that she married the man she wanted to marry and carried babies in her belly and then in her arms and it wasn't in any way his fault but it was and she threw herself away from him, her legs tangling in the blanket and she fell to the rooftop scraping the hands that had never held her children even though she could feel their fictional hands holding hers with the unreserved love that is saved solely for the person that is Mom and Sarah was finally able to stop making the low moaning and form words.

_"Em-ma Al-ex_."

The tears came, the wild-eyed tears from a mother whose children were swept away to sea never to be seen again and as the images of her son and daughter floated away as the dream faded Jareth tried to approach her. She half pushed half clawed at him so hard he fell over the lounge chair, making no attempt to defend himself in his guilt over knowing what had happened.

Thrust back in time, Sarah did the only thing she could do in her young body; she fled.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

Her flight was so sudden, so unexpected, that Jareth feared residual magic was assisting her escape.

After Sarah lashed out at him, he laid on the roof in a pile of his own guilt, racked with sobs and lost in the weakness of his frozen body that seemed incapable of racing after her. It was a burden, his guilt, and it stopped him just long enough for him to fall into a dark hole in his mind as he, too, mourned the loss of the dream. This form he was in was so empathetic that he could only see from her perspective; feel her devastation, could only scream at himself for his role.

Curled in a fetal position, the sun's morning rays curling softly around him, he gritted his teeth against the pain of loss and betrayal. He smashed the sodden tar roof with his fists before scraping himself up as slowly and as broken as if he were still covering himself with the image of a ninety year old.

Her panic was slipping through him. Who knew where a woman with a strong will, magic he gave her, and who had lost everything would escape to. The possibilities were endless. Too late, too late, he scrambled down the stairs after Sarah. She was not in the loft, and a limping jog down the street turned up nothing.

He called her name and the only answer he received was the low rumble of thunder. A quick glance up revealed clouds as black as night rolling in from the east. A storm was coming.

* * *

Sarah couldn't run fast enough or inflict enough physical pain to cease the burning in her heart.

She hit brick walls with her fists as she sped by them until her hands were bruised and raw, the knees of her jeans were torn away to show bloody scrapes beneath them from falling over curbs. Blindly she wished that she would fall so hard, hit something so bad that she wouldn't be able to get up and continue running, wouldn't be able to feel her heart burning like so much acid in her chest.

The approaching storm cleared everyone from the street, and the sidewalk was her own path of pain as she clung to the memories of the dream as they slowly began to slip away.

That was the problem with dreams. So vivid, so real, until the dreamer awoke. Sadness or desire that seemed so right in the safety net of the pillow always bled away like watercolors that were saturated to transparency. Already she couldn't remember the color of her childrens' eyes, the sound of their laughter.

Daylight dimmed until it resembled twilight. The rumble of thunder she hear distantly was upon her and her tears mixed with a sudden sheet of frigid rain. All the while the thoughts tumbled in her head in a primitive chant: run, run, alex, emma, run, Sarah, run

Turning corner by corner when she felt like turning, Sarah found herself standing on a dark beach, trying to wipe water out of her eyes with a drenched sleeve. The ocean was wild before her, slate gray in color and the surf crashing so fiercely it looked like the waves were trying to claw their way out of the deadly water to take over the sand. It looked how she felt and Sarah felt a calmness bloom inside her heart.

She would join it.

* * *

Taking to the skies proved just as futile; the fast dropping pressure and swirling dark clouds in the distance buried his search under frustration and growing fear. He circled under rapidly moving clouds for as long as he could before he took refuge in a bell tower. He knew he should be elated that he was strong enough to change form but he did it so instinctively, so unconsciously that there was no time to wonder if he _had_ the power to do it. Of course he did. It was for Sarah.

His talons sounded as he paced back and forth in panic and snowy white wings shook every minute in a nervous tic. Who knew what she would do, where she would go, what could happen to her, and every second he wallowed in those thoughts, his panic rose another notch. This was Sarah..._Sarah_...who visited a magic kingdom as a child, had the will to move beyond it as an adult only to have her world turned upside down less than a week ago. She could move the stars if she had a mind to.

This wasn't supposed to happen. _None_ of this was supposed to happen, but especially not last night. He had given her a little magic as a token of his regard, an impulse really. He would never have guessed she still had the power to wish them into a new life.

_But the King had fallen in love with the girl, and he had given her special powers._

There was no expiration date on fairy tales.

He should have told her. He knew early on that what he was seeing wasn't real, couldn't possibly be real, Happily Ever After was not for the likes of him. If it were, she would have taken his hand when he pleaded..._begged_...her to fear him, love him, do as he said. Time for him was irrelevant until moments like that occurred; just how _long_ had he been waiting for his happy ending? Where would they be now, if she had accepted his offer that night so long ago? They certainly wouldn't have had their storybook life as they did last night. He in one realm, she from another...an ageless creature and a petulant youth. It was laughable. Always, always there would have been something that would have torn at them until happiness was just a word in a book. His cruelty. Her stubbornness. He stole the child. She dared defy him. He fell in love. She thought love was like a fairy tale.

Not anymore.

Their life together that he watched unfold last night was finite and he foolishly kept it to himself, hoping that enough memories would be created to sustain them both. He should have known better, known that her love of him and her family and their story would be so encompassing that waking up to find out it wasn't real would lay her to waste. He didn't even bother to consider that perhaps she had calmed down; he had seen the suffering, raw and horrible, in her eyes. He had heard her screams bend in pitch as her throat remembered its youth, forget for a second, and then remember again.

Those broken sounds would be with him, always. It was those screams, and the names of their children falling from her lips to shatter on the ground like so much glass that made his mind, which had been swirling like a maelstrom, become as still as a star in the sky.

Jareth chose.

Defying the danger, he leaped off the tower and into the storm. Nothing could make what he had done right, nothing would ever give Sarah that life back, but he could do one thing.

He could end this. Right now.

Jareth banked once, twice, and headed for the loft.

* * *

The first step into the angry water was cold, so cold it caused her to gasp...but not enough to stop her progress as she waded deeper and deeper into the surf, letting her weight sway from side to side in the tide.

By the time it reached her thighs she was numb, immune to the sting on her skin, her hands clenching and unclenching in the choppy waves. She could feel the pull of the ocean as the undertow waxed and waned, drawing her closer and then pushing her away.

Calm, _calm_, her mind was calm.

Deciding to let go made her body tingle, the same way she felt when she realized she loved Jareth. In a way, she supposed it was the same thing. Ending it, falling in love...both finished life as she knew it.

_Which way do you want to go?_

_Yes, which way?_

_I figured it out. Its a piece of cake_.

The world was so _loud _around her.

Sarah took another step and was unexpectedly seized by the rip current. It dragged her away from the beach with enough force that her startled yelp yielded only a mouthful of seawater that caused her to wretch. The burning in her heart moved a few inches inward and settled into her lungs as she fought instinctively. The weight of her clothing was pulling her down as the current sped her farther and farther out.

The rip current was so strong it was hard to believe it was nature and not supernatural. Either way, it was harder and harder to break the surface each time she was pulled down, and longer and longer time was spent underwater, trying to be free of the pull. Her whole body was numb, a frozen banana that was refusing to respond to her mental commands to swim, kick, flail, anything-

_End it all!_

_Want to live!_

_Love you!_

_Hate you!_

Jareth...

...and the Goblin King.

Although too late to save herself, Sarah finally understood. It _was_ possible to love someone and hate them at the same time. And yes...it was _quite _confusing. Why, just look at what it made her do. In the middle of all this mess and here she was, dying.

Everything was getting quiet under the surface. Her chin tilted up, an unconscious movement to seek air one final time.

Her eyes closed.

_Alex. Emma._

Goodbye

* * *

The second Jareth flew in the window, he let go of his owl form and didn't so much land; he crashed to the floor of the loft.

Weak, frozen, he dragged himself to a seated position on the couch. His skin tingled everywhere from the magic as well as the bone deep chill finally succumbing to central heat.

Find him. End this.

Teeth ground together in determination, Jareth managed to stand. As far as heroes go, he looked rather shoddy what with the soaked jeans, the t-shirt plastered to his lean frame, and hair hanging limply down his back. His eyes, of course, his eyes made up for the lack of wardrobe finesse.

Glare blazing, he stalked into the bedroom and without hesitation, ripped the blanket from the mirror on the wall.

His reflection stared back at him.

He broke his Sarah. Even though he was the incarnation of everything good and kind about the ruler of the Underground, he still managed to break her. When you loved someone, you weren't supposed to hurt them.

"Goblin King," he croaked.

Fists clenched and nostrils flaring, he waited.

* * *

It was supposed to be dark. Not that she spent vast amounts of time picturing death, but when she did, she always imagined it as end of scene, fade to black.

There was light.

In the light there was a shadow. It grew in size, and Sarah made out a hand reaching through the water to her.

Maybe this was the light at the end of the tunnel, her dying brain cells managed.

Because it was awful lonely and cold where she was, and because she believed it signaled the end, Sarah reached for the hand.

It was surprisingly solid as it pulled.

* * *

His reflection changed so slowly it was almost too delicate to track with his eyes. Slowly, so slowly, the image of Sarah's bed was shadowed over by another – his bed – in the Goblin Castle. Twenty first century curtains and sunlight dissolved at a microscopic scale to the foggy tint of the Underground, and the silk gauze he vaguely remembered pushing aside each morning as he viewed his kingdom.

What hurt the eyes and the brain the most was his reflection. Jareth couldn't tell when he stopped looking like himself as started looking like the evil King. Somewhere in the middle of the shadow transformation, as his youthful glow kept fading but before it passed into a deathly pallor, and before his face became all angles and teeth, there was a brief instant of recognition when, at the second their images were balanced, he looked as he had before this whole mess began.

Playful eyes.

Cruel smile.

The mirror image clicked into place.

"_You_." The Goblin King actually seemed surprised.

"Me," Jareth agreed from behind clenched teeth. "Give me my kingdom," he growled.

"_My_ kingdom," his dark side corrected.

They began pacing back and forth, two clever sets of eyes noting each twitch, each breath of his opponent's. Dead citron eyes met burning jade.

There was something to this scene that drew creepy lines of deja vu up Jareth's back. Maybe it would work.

"Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I will fight my way to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to end what has happened."

The words seemed to create unease, but that was about all. Distrusting, the Goblin King matched Jareth sneer for sneer. "Foolish words from a foolish boy."

Despite the nausea growing in his stomach from his eyes not wanting to accept the spectacle in front of him, Jareth would not be swayed.

"My will is as strong as yours. My kingdom as great."

"I will eat your heart," the Goblin King hissed, "and I will make her burn." The final word he drew out deep in his throat until Jareth could hear the flames. He paled at the thought of Sarah, his Sarah, within twenty miles of his razor grin. Those teeth were sharp.

"You have no power over me," Jareth insisted.

The Goblin King began to laugh.

* * *

Sarah woke up on a sunny beach.

The beach she has just left, to be exact. The same seashells, the same pile of sea glass worn smooth by the waves. The storm had passed and the sun was peeking out from behind a cloud.

She was not alone.

Blinking away the sting of seawater in her eyes, Sarah sucked in a sandy breath and immediately began retching. She spat out water, bile, and sand while a hand whacked her repeatedly on the back.

_Mom are you okay?_

She heard those words, those beautiful words more with her heart than her ears. Sarah gasped and finally cleared her lungs and her head enough to stare at the raven haired boy and tow headed girl that sat on the beach next to her.

Alex and Emma, circa age eleven, were watching her with worry in her eyes. She was so shocked, so surprised, that she could only sit on the wet sand dumbly as Emma reached forward with a handkerchief and wipe sand from the side of her face she had woken up on.

"Am I dead?" she finally managed. Alex cocked his head at her and grinned.

_That would be too easy now, wouldn't it?_

"Are you real?"

_Real enough. Not for long._ That was Emma.

They were the last bit of magic from Jareth's gift. The insistent buzzing she felt, the razor sharp pull of power that had stayed with her from the moment of waking was gone. And then they would be gone. They were her kids but they were not her kids. Each second she stared at them, they became more diaphanous. Her heart was breaking at their translucency. The cogs of her memory were shifting and tick-tick-ticking back into place and one the pieces fit into the clockwork of Sarah, she would be free from the dream, free from the attachment of that sleep-world, and she would be herself again. She could feel it and was sorry that her dream come true, her kids, and the story she lived had no place in reality.

"I love you." It seemed she could only manage three words at a time. It was all that would fit out of her throat as the magical apparitions kept fading in the sunlight.

_Oh mom. We love you too. _

The look on Alex's face grew solemn. _Dad needs you._

"Jareth?" His name, for the first time today, didn't hurt. She reached out for their hands one last time, and met only air. The magic was too far gone. Squeezing her eyes shut, her heart burned fiercely for a second and then the pain passed. Tick-tick-tick. There wasn't time to mourn, only time for a sigh and then a shoring up of strength. Finish this, end this, move on. Time for one last question.

"What do I do?" she asked, her eyes raising from the sand to the almost invisible forms.

_Go home._

_Go back._

_Love him._

_Forgive him._

_Goodbye._

They were gone.

"Goodbye," Sarah whispered.


	19. Mini Chapter Eighteen

There was no answer as to when his thoughts became so broken, there was only broken now

~here

He is here

~endwinkilllive

Pleasant was never something he would ever want to feel and yet what a pleasant surprise to see the traitor / the man who stole his face – his magic – his sanity – his life

just standing defiantly just on the other side of the mirror he had just had Hoggle clean spattered blood off of

CHICKENS WERE JUST SO ANNOYING.

Him

_"You."_ it finally came

and oh how he wanted to smash that perfect face in, shatter that perfect skin again and again and again and again until it resembled those upside down guards he had righted side up before turning them inside out and rightside in and that had been so delicious he had almost forgotten his burning for her and him

"**Give me my kingdom."**

ah that sweet burning was back

at the words coming from his voice

out of someone else's mouth

and it scarred him deeper that those words were

spoken

in

defiance

and

abject

contrariness

to what was rightfully his

"**_My_** kingdom." And now the list of tortures and foggy red delights that was beginning to be compiled for real in his head along with broken thoughts that did didn't make sense half the time.

It was a divine dance he found himself in, step to the right matched with a step to the left from his (horriblebeautiful) mirror image and he led the curve of the arc of their path back and forth in sync. Predator/prey lovers/unite

It was a tale as old as time: david and goliath Jack and the beanstalk, angel and devil. In the shattered glass of his thoughts he had no doubt that he was the hideous beast, he was the beanstalk, he was the shadow in the cave in the dark in the bleeding in the villain and this time he would WIN

The other's words were so boring. So tedious. So unoriginal.

_Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered..._

...blah blah blah.

His mouth was filled with drool as He watched this other/version and thought about tearing him limb from limb and then feasting on his heart. Maybe his brain. Maybe he would remember everything if he ate the brain.

It was a thought that sent him cackling.

"_I will eat your heart,"_ first, he thought, then the brain, "_and I will make her burn." _

Her, oh her. To finally be near her, to taste the same air that she stood in, to test her resiliency to his touch, to stretch her to see how far she would go before she broke...or tore. It could be so delicious finding out which one it would be.

_You have no power over me._

It was too much.

Who needed power when all he had to do was take his head?

HE began to laugh.

He laughed so hard he had to wipe a tear from his eye.

* * *

NOTE: This was just a mini chapter. I had forgotten I wrote this during writers block and I forgot how creepy it was.

So...I kind of know exactly how this is supposed to go from here and I need a few words of encouragement to sit down and finish this thing. Does anyone want to help me? PM me por favor!


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